Formula 18 is not exactly a beach cat, but it is close.

We decided to take our Hobie Tiger for a longer cruising trip in archipelago of Finland, covering 150 nautical miles in five days. What makes coasts of Finland coasts so special/different?



We have thousands of underwater rocks, shallow areas and so on all around. Even when you go 10 or 15 miles out from the coast and closest reasonably sized islands, there is random rocks in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand, you can go hundreds of miles between small and large islands in beautiful setting, without worrying about too big waves. In some cases "between islands" is narrow, less than 50m straits with cliffs all around. We do not have too many beaches overall, and most of the beaches have some sand but mostly rocks.

The full story including plenty of pictures and several pages of text is available at http://positroni.fi/2016/cruising/en.html. (This is not an ad/link to blog)

Our route:



Parked on a beach:



Feel free to ask anything and I will try to answer as soon as possible.

Wow, looks like a beautiful trip, thanks for all the details and pictures. I've been shopping for a new GPS to replace my Garmin Etrex, how did you like your 62S? was it hard to operate with one hand while under way?

And my opinion on the beachcat definition, if it's a catamaran and can be sailed off the beach, it's a beachcat!

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Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

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62S was/is okay, but there's a few pain points:

- changing batteries really suck (the fit is so tight you really need a tool for that). And obviously the device is not waterproof when changing the batteries.
- display is rather small.
- filtering the maps is really suboptimal, and same for some markings. For example, fairway lines have a same color as lines with leading lights. Underwater and visible rocks have same symbol. Estate borders (on sea as well) are always visible and add really useless garbage. I guess some of these depend on what maps you are using.
- it's very slow.
- if you add waypoints, waypoint line (thick purple one) covers everything, including some rocks. So you need to be very careful with that.

It's possible to use it one-handed, but I couldn't do that while helming. But being on the trapeze, reading map and having mainsail sheet is doable. We have a long shock cord below the trampoline coming up from the middle for the GPS, so that you can just let go of it, and it'll fly back to its place in the middle. We found that way more convenient than having it strapped on body.

Customizable trip computer and compass view with route features (ETA to next, course and distance to next/destination etc.) are really nice. Same for statistics. There's nice details such as "time to sunset", and automatic switching to night view (black background and white text) after sunset.

I think i agree w damon, if you can push it off the beach without a ramp, i would consider it a beach cat

Most excellent trip & write up.
I use a Garmin 76cx GPS, with G2 Bluechart maps, they are the exact same thing as the paper nautical maps, & use the same symbology.
The buttons look identical, but you have a slightly larger screen, which would be very helpful.
As most know, it can be hard to determine exactly where you are in relation to those little "x"s that signify rocks. I find you can't use the GPS very well for strategic planning when blasting along, but it does allow you to see just where that rock is. Or set up a course, then use the Course Deviation Bar to show if you are left or right of desired track.
If I have the background light turned to MED intensity, I get around 12 hours out of 2 AA Duracells, so I never have to change midday. I found occasionally there was slight water inside the battery compartment if the unit was left on the tramp in fire hose conditions. I open the cover at the end of the day to dry out, so far, 3 years in, it still runs.
For those not conversant with the metric velocities, just double metres/sec to get knots, (China & Russia give us landing winds in m/sec). So they experienced 22kts, & 28kt gusts, pretty damn good wind, I say.



Edited by Edchris177 on Jul 15, 2016 - 03:27 PM.

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Added knots/inches to all those measurements on the webpage, good point.

Turning from upwind to downwind in 11m/s and 14m/s gusts (22 & 28 knots) is really scary, especially because we're a bit lightweight (only a bit over 130kg + 10kg unevenly packed water&food&equipment), but we still have full-sized jib (and gennaker, which obviously wasn't up).

I wouldn't go with anything smaller than 62S's screen - it's already tiny. Also, I totally agree with route planning - it just isn't doable with a small handheld GPS. We used laminated A3 (tabloid in US) paper maps for route planning, and GPS only for "can we go 30 meters farther that way" type of decisions.

As of your exact location on the GPS display - never trust that one. There is offsets in maps, not all markers are exact, there's lag on your location information, and GPS lock may be inaccurate.