Passage Planning
Written by: Deric Hetzel
April 2nd, 2024
While land lubbers spend their leisure time during winters in the Northeast curled up next to the fire binge watching their favorite Netflix series, I prefer spending my evenings planning the next sail adventure. For cruising, this means passage planning for future sails in New England waters. I get out my iPad and laptop, open up my favorite chart apps along with the Waterway Guide and my trusty Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book. This year, I’m adding a new tool to my box, Ditch Navigation. Ditch is a new app that uses historic boat traffic data from AIS recorded plots, and then uses Artificial Intelligence to draw a preferred route between selected waypoints. What did I just write? Basically, the Ditch navigation app shows you where other boats have gone before, giving the passage planner a new tool to pick safe routes. Fortunately, I have been a Beta tester for this boating navigation app, which I put to use sailing from Annapolis down to Norfolk after the Annapolis Sailboat show this October.
Although I’ve sailed up and down the East coast several times, I’ve only sailed in the Chesapeake once, several years ago. So, I’m unfamiliar with the area. The Chesapeake is a favorite cruising ground, but can be shallow, a concern for deep drafted sailboats. My planned first stop after Annapolis was Solomons Island, which happens to have a great Italian restaurant where my wife’s cousin is the chef.
Entering the harbor, the chart shows two marked channels, one of which is more direct, but it also shows some shallow areas. Pulling out the Ditch Navigation app, I placed a waypoint at Drum Point (the turn in from the Bay) and the other point in the harbor entrance. The app performed its AI magic, and up pops routes taken by other vessels. The routes are shaded in different colors, with blue indicating boats determined to have “local knowledge,” or basically boats that are in the area a lot.
The Gray colored routes are boats without local knowledge and the orange line is the Ditch Navigation Smart Path. It is clear which to take, the southern route may take a little longer, but boats tend to avoid the northern route. This Intracoastal Waterway Navigation App is good enough for me, and any prudent mariner.
I’ll be back with what I came up with during last winter’s passage planning using a Local Knowledge Boating App, it will be fun!
