Raymarine secret tech revealed.

I am often bemused by things I see on TV especially funky boating related content. Louis C.K. showed a photo he took of his chart plotter on some late night TV show talking about when he grounded his boat. It was from a classic E120 Ray system and I quickly was able to see the the safety contour was still set at the factory default of 66'. What this meant was all of the water that is less than 65' deep was all the same dark blue color on the chart. Set it to 7' and all water that is dark blue is.... you guessed it, is 6' or less, maybe much less so pay attention. Turquoise colored water is then 6' to 12', and white water is deeper than 12'. I sent Louis an email with instructions on how to set up his E120 better. I suspect he was too embarrassed to respond back to me.

So it bugs me that apparently Hollywood and TV professionals seem to know little or nothing about boats other than there should be women in bikinis aboard. The set up is simple. The shrewd NCIS New Orleans personnel suspect the boat they are on took a trip and a murder happened. The first antics not included in the little video clip was having the actor look at the waypoint list to figure out where the boat went. How could that be determined? Well in an abstract sort of way waypoint data does have a time stamp showing when it was created, but not used. The actor then decides to use Raymarine's top secret new "Back Trak 3D(™)" technology you will see for the very first time. Look out track points, you're a thing of the past. You're history, passé, old school and devoid of high tech 3D computer graphics.

The sad thing from the producer's viewpoint should be all the wasted money spent on pasting in a cheesy CAD model and zooming in on it when the track points could have been used for free and would have been realistic. I didn't buy the alternative "Back Trak" thing, but maybe it's real? Producers, got questions about real boaty stuff? Send me an email.