[Rhodes22-list] Rhodes 22 does 17.6kts !!!

[John Lock]

Now that I have your attention...  that's what my GPS reported on 
Saturday afternoon.  We were sailing in light wind, but the GPS was 
reporting speeds all over the place - sometimes 1.5, then 6.4, then 
3.5, then 0... all within a matter of seconds.  Clearly this was not 
trustworthy.

I turned the GPS off and back on again, figuring I'd unscramble its 
brains that way.  No good, still got wacky speeds reported, even 
though our progress was pretty steady and I'd guess around 2.5kts.

So... we decided to go visit a friend on the lake and called him up 
to see if he's home. "Sure, come on over!", he says, " but my 
satellite service is down, so no TV".  Aha!  Now the pieces come 
together - solar activity must be mucking with the satellites.  It 
was a good lesson on the limitations of electronic  gear.  I wasn't 
tracking position, so I can't tell if that was whacked too, but I'm 
guessing you couldn't trust it either based on the confused speed 
reports I got.

Don't throw away your paper charts just yet ;-)

Cheers!

John Lock
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
s/v Pandion - '79 Rhodes 22
Lake Sinclair, GA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~