It is great to hear that this year already 31 yachts have signed up with the Down Under Rally Go East.  Exciting times are coming up now, preparing your boat and yourselves to embark on this amazing cruise.

One of the areas you may be looking at is whether charts in the South Pacific are accurate or not. On the whole  New Caledonia is very accurately charted on Navionics and Open CPN, even when the chart says cautiously ‘hydrography incomplete’.  Of course it still pays to be cautious but on three years sailing in New Caledonia, we have only once come across a bommie not charted.

We can confidently say however that this is not the case in Fiji.  Quite often we have sailed over places indicated as land on the charts. One way to have an accurate view of the location of reefs is through the SAS planet freeware.  This freeware uses satellite photography to have a very accurate view of the area.  Even yesterday as we anchored in the dark in Tasmania of Schouten Island it showed us where there was weed and where there was sand.  If you want to know more about this system, here is an earlier blog.

Navigating through Uncharted Reefs

It can appear quite complex, so if you battle with any of the technology please feel free to ask us for help via our email address at the top of the homepage, via Facebook or messenger.  So long chaps!