Navigation -- New school meets old school on Begone.

Navigation – Navigation in Mexico has its own challenges.  What you see on your GPS/Chartplotter can be off by miles.  Yikes.  So having a couple good looks at your route can be important. 

For example, on the way to La Paz, Begone’s JRC radar/chartplotter and I had not quite yet made friends.  But I charted a good course between Isla Monserrate and Isla Catalina.  Tom looked at the course and wanted to be sure we were seeing what we thought we were seeing so charted our course on his paper charts. 

“Uh, Suzanne.  You may want to take a look at this.”  Sure enough, my nice  little course could have taken us right across this nasty rock awash (barely noticeable on the chart plotter).  But thankfully, Tom and his “old school” paper chart navigation noticed the potential problem, and kept us out of trouble. 

As imperfect as the old paper charts may be in Mexico, using a combination of GPS/Chartplotter, paper charts, great cruising guides, GoogleEarth, sometimes radar, AND watchful eyes is how we’re approaching this navigation thing.