Finishing Cornet Bay - July 10

On a brilliantly sunny day Gregg, Neal, Clarence and I (Nancy) managed to get the rest of the transects done in Cornet Bay. Gregg made it much easier by plotting the transects on the navigation software and unifying everything on the laptop, eliminating the need for a hand held GPS and paper transect maps.

What made it hard was the wind, the current, (none of us had ever seen whitecaps on tiny Cornet Bay before)


the sun, (that's Neal hiding under a towel in an attempt to see the transects plotted on the laptop)


and numerous navigational hazards in the shape of boat traffic, crab pots,

derelict vessels


docks, (note the sailboat trapped behind the pilings)


and rock cliffs.


Under these conditions, the path of our first attempt at a transect resembled a ball of yarn attacked by a cat.
It took several passes, but Clarence figured out tricks to keep us on course. On our longest, downwind transect (the straight turquoise line) he ran the 130 horse outboard in reverse to slow our progress enough so that the camera didn't record a blur of sand and eelgrass whooshing by.

Gregg says "the transects we did July 10 were: #4,#7,#24,#40,#50,#12,#5 and #6. MediaMapper didn't print out all the transect point numbers (quirk of the program.)"


Neal also sent his view of our trip. "On Thursday, July 10 we had 8 transects. I consider this the most successful outing. We had good transects mapped on Mediamapper and we could track our position in real time. It was difficult at times, but we knew how we were doing. Besides we were getting used to a new boat. With more experience we would consider this a normal day in very acceptable conditions."