Andy135

The skipper took it gently at around 25kts. It took him just over 4 hours. Need to check how much fuel is left in the tanks as I didn't remember to check during the handover.

Right! There just aren't enough! But fear not, I have some on order 😉👍

She's not slow... 😁

Well, I found a local skipper to bring her back in the end... here she is on her dry stack this afternoon after her crossing from Jersey. #newboatfeeling!

This is a good suggestion. The seller has done the crossing a few times already in his previous boats. Definitely an option to consider...

Yep, I'm going into this with my eyes open. Sadly there will be VAT to pay.

Charlie - these are exactly the sort of questions I was hoping for - thanks. They're helping me to see that it's unrealistic to do it on my own, in an untested boat, without a buddy boat, without any prior experience of the crossing. You and Mike have provided the sound voices of experience that I was asking for. They have helped to clarify my options for getting the boat back (assuming I purchase it). Many thanks. It's the trailer + ferry option for me. 😊

Mike, thank you for taking the time to share such a comprehensive list. Appreciated. Regarding your point on weather... what wind direction would be considered undesirable? As for the remainder of your points - all noted. None are overly concerning apart from the fact that it will be a new-to-me boat without the confidence in the equipment that comes from multiple short trips near a safe haven, and you've hit the nail on the head about what happens if I need a rescue 30 miles out - this is the big issue for me, given that I wouldn't have a buddy boat. Definitely food for thought... My fall-back plan is to hire a boat trailer (the boat in question will just about fit on a large trailer) and go back to pick it up, then take it back on the Portsmouth ferry. As I type it... this seems a much more sensible plan! 👍

I'm viewing a boat for sale in Jersey on Monday. There is the possibility that if all goes well I may be in a position to simply drive her back. My outline passage plan would be Jersey to Poole, refuel then follow the coast back to Portsmouth. But I've never done a channel crossing before. I would be flying solo, and in a new-to-me boat that I won't have done much water time on. Clearly this is not an ideal situation to be in. What advice and guidance can PBSBAC members offer as to what I should be aware of on the crossing; freighters (obviously!), tides, changing weather conditions etc. If I do it, I will have my PLB with me.

🤣🤣🤣 Now there's a blast from the past!! Guilty as charged! I find all this stuff fascinating. If I get all geeky about mapping and sounder technology then no-one notices that I can't catch fish!

I recently invested in a C-Map Max N+ card with their new Reveal layer - one of the guys in my club had sent round a Whatsapp image of his plotter showing some amazing images of the sea floor so I wanted to see for myself. I consider myself a Navionics fan because of their detailed contours, but the C-Map Reveal sea floor interpretation takes this to the next level. This first image is just south of the Owers, off Selsey Bill. That great big hole shows up nice and clearly, including the steep face of the NNW wall of the hole. Got to be worth a drift over that. And below is a close up of the wreck from the image above. Here's an image of a wreck that I had marked on my plotter already showing good correlation between my bow and stern marks and the underlying sea floor mapping. I reckon C-Map have licensed some of the sea-floor mapping data from the DORIS site as the C-Map coverage (or rather the gaps in coverage) of the St Catherine's Deep area are pretty much identical to DORIS's, which can't be a coincidence. The Reveal layer could be a great way to find that little patch of unfished rough ground that doesn't show up on a regular chart. I already have a few marks picked out in my neck of the woods to try out. The card I bought covers the south coast and most of the east and west coasts. I've yet to take a look at the coverage of Poole Bay and surrounding area but will post up some images shortly. Anyone have any requests for places they want to see?

Judging by his absence I'd say he's still recovering from the celebrations. Happy Birthday Neil. Hope your head feels better soon 🍷🤢🤣

I had to download them first before I could play them but that's quite a difference indeed. Lovely conditions in the second vid. 👍

It's good that you found this out now. Smart move to get your money back - there are plenty of sound boats out there to choose from. 👍

Some nice sharks and great footage there Rob. 👍 What make is your boat?

Hi Gary, The US is the major market for sidescan, which is why most of the marketing material and videos are aimed at their style of fishing. As for bream, yes. SS can identify their nests; they show up as clusters of circular patterns on the sea floor. I may have a pic somewhere that I'll dig out. As for transducers, your Simrad Go should be compatible with any of the transducers from Navico, the parent company of Simrad, Lowrance and B&G. They have two transom mount SS transducers worth considering at present. Active Imaging 3-in-1 or TotalScan. If you're evaluating whether to invest in SS, then I'd say that if you only ever fish the marks that you already have then you probably don't really need SS. But if you like to scout around for new marks or like to see what wrecks look like then SS is a good tool because you can search much wider swathes of the sea floor vs regular downscan sonar. It makes pinpointing wrecks much easier or spotting structure that could be a fish holding feature.

Yes, I noticed that too. They're from Humminbird's new Mega range. I believe they're the first manufacturer to introduce megahertz frequencies to the recreational boating market. https://www.humminbird.com/learn/imaging/mega-imaging You're right about higher freqencies. Generally the higher the freq = the higher the res but water penetration suffers = shallow water only. You can see on my images that the 800khz image is much darker and harder to interpret than the 455khz image and this is why I don't anticipate UK anglers needing to invest in the megahertz range - the water we fish in is simply too deep for it to be useful. In the US bass fishing market I can see that it would be beneficial if you're fishing shallow lakes (<10m depth) and hunting for individual fish that are hiding around submerged structure, but that's not our style of fishing. And finally, yes, tarpon are big fish - sadly not representative of our UK fishing but included as an example to illustrate how a fish shows up on side scan. I'd love to see something that size on my FF in the UK but it's unlikely. Pack tope maybe...??

One other point to add when looking for fish. In the UK it's rare that we have single large fish showing up on their own on a sonar image. We're more likely to see fish in small shoals... and this is often the best way to be certain that there are fish down there. If they show up as a shoal of bright spots/ovals, then it's probably worth dropping a line. If you can only see one or two isolated spots then a) they may not be fish, and b) even if they are, there are only a few of them so perhaps not worth trying to target them individually from 20m+ above.

Here's another Googled image that shows more clearly how a single fish shows up on sidescan. Note how shallow they are (8ft) which is one of the main reasons why the fish shows up so clearly, and so large. Fish at our depths will be much smaller and harder to identify.

Hi Gary, it's hard to say if they're fish or not. In the last image the white scatter at the bottom of the pic was my wash as I manoeuvred the boat whilst drifting. In the first pic its possible that the brighter specks could have been small baitfish, but with sidescan you can usually tell it's a fish or not by its shape; a fish will show up as a bright, elongated shape that looks vaguely like a fish seen from above. The specks in the pic seem more circular, so it's not clear cut. Here's an example of how fish show up on sidescan. This isn't my image (I just Googled it) and the shoal is in much shallower water, but you can clearly see the fish (tarpon) in the water column and their sonar shadows on the sea floor. I wouldn't expect this level of detail at the depth we fish over wrecks in the UK, but I would expect to see the rough shape of the fish.

These are birds eye view images (top down). The centre line is the blind spot directly below the transducer. It shoots either side of the boat but can't see directly below, hence the blind spot in the image. So in the first pic, the wreck was to the left of my boat as I drifted alongside it. The dark areas either side of the centre line is the water column but not directly down, rather it's the water between the sea floor to the left and right of the boat, and the transducer itself.

Got a few drifts over the Camswan in Sandown Bay the weekend before last. Here are a couple of pics, one at 455khz, the other at 800. The banana shape of the first and last pic is because I was trying to correct the drift half way through - doh! Still decent pics though. She's a hungry wreck... I lost 3 rigs on her in 3 drifts. Afterwards I did some research online and apparently she's known for having 4-5m tall beams running along her centre line, which can be clearly be seen in the last pic. No wonder I was losing tackle.

Wow! Scary stuff.

Yep, there's (unsurprisingly) been a mad rush for them round our way too. Wriggly gold!

What a result! Be rude not to get out on the water now! 👍