The Electronics and Navigation Workshop will be held in one of the Boathouses at the docks in downtown Toledo.
The Workshop will begin with a class on proper VHF radio usage and etiquette in the morning, starting about 10:00. It will be conducted by either Joe Novello or Bo Neill. We'll help each other figure out the features of our radios afterwards. Lunch will be across the street at Cobblestone Pizza.
After lunch, about 1:00, Bob Larkin will give a presentation on Coastal Navigation in the Age of the Cell Phone, which will cover how to get your head out of the boat and use charts and the Mark I Eyeball to stay aware of where you are, and where you're going, with only minimal help from your GPS or nav program. A Q&A session will follow.
Following Bob, John Kohnen will give a presentation on how to use two of the cheap nav programs on tablets and cell phones, including planning routes and marking waypoints using a real computer before transferring them to the small device. There will be an opportunity for others to share what they know about navigation using mobile devices afterwards, and we can help each other get our nav programs set up.
The programs John will cover are OpenCPN for real computers and Android mobile devices, and Navionics for Android and Apple mobile devices. Please download the programs before the workshop, if you can, and get charts for the Yaquina Bay area, if you can figure out how to do so. There will be Wifi at the Boathouse, but it will be slow if we all try to use it at once.
Mooring at the Toledo transient docks costs only an optional donation to the Boathouses, and sleeping aboard is fine. Some of us will be bringing our boats on Friday and making a weekend of it. The tides on Sunday will be fairly weak, so we can do a trip up or down the Yaquina River. Camping in your vehicle in the parking lot is free, or you can drive up to the park at Elk City for more formal, but still dry, camping.
Please let me know if you're coming to the workshop, so we can ne ready for you. Thanks!
Tide predictions at Toledo from WXTide32:
- Friday, May 29
- Low Tide:12:43 AM PDT3.0 ft.
- High Tide:6:01 AM PDT6.6 ft.
- Low Tide:1:21 PM PDT-0.3 ft.
- High Tide:8:16 M PDT6.5 ft.
- Saturday, May 30
- Low Tide:2:02 AM PDT2.6 ft.
- High Tide:7:18 AM PDT6.2 ft.
- Low Tide:2:18 PM PDT0.0 ft.
- High Tide:9:04 M PDT7.0 ft.
- Sunday, May 31
- Low Tide:3:17 AM PDT1.9 ft.
- High Tide:8:41 AM PDT6.0 ft.
- Low Tide:3:14 PM PDT0.4 ft.
- High Tide:9:48 M PDT7.5 ft.
Topo maps of Yaquina Bay and River in KAP format for import into most nav programs.
Topo map images (PNG) and indexing info (XLS) to import them into nav programs.
Here is NOAA chart No. 18581 (PNG image) showing Yaquina Bay and the Yaquina River up to Toledo.
A NOAA weather forecast for the area.