It's all in the details

by Christine Kling

Here at Write on the Water we have this tag line, "So you want to quit your job, move onto a boat and write."  You notice there is nothing in there that says I want to spend a month driving a boat to get somewhere where I can settle down and write. But that is what I chose to do and now, finally, I am here.  I have made it to the Chesapeake (see this morning's position on my laptop navigation program above).

I have found with all this hairy Intracoastal navigation through buoys and channels that the charts on the laptop are great, but I really don't want it topsides in the damp air, so I've been using my iPad as my chart plotter.

The problem I found was not with the iPad but with the Navionics charts. A couple of days ago we did the channel around Roanoke Island and I was following Wild Matilda who has a Furuno chart plotter.  There were times that I chose to follow in his wake and my chart plotter showed me as either aground or on top of the buoys.  I wonder what would have happened had I chosen to go where my charts told me to go?  I really like the program iNavX on the iPad and I'm going to have to check to see if I can get any other charts for that program.  I have another charting program on the iPad called Charts and Tides, but I find the charts difficult to read with too little color variation and the icon of the boat is difficult to follow. It also isn't anywhere near as easy to use with waypoints and goto set-ups.

When you are dealing with traffic like we were in Norfolk yesterday you really do want your charts to be accurate.  One would think that with today's satellite and GPS technologies that in areas like the Intracoastal that are so heavily trafficked, the charting companies would be sure to get those electronic charts as accurate as possible.

So now that I am finally coming to the end of my month of boat driving, I am finally going to be able to settle down and finish editing this manuscript.  I've been working on it all along, but I still need about two weeks to get it right.  Why so long?  Because like the charts, to me, a book is all in the details.  I'm a fanatic about that.  I know that there are people out there in this new ebook world who are preaching that writers should write as fast as they can and get it out there, but it's not about the money or the rankings to me.  When a reader hops on board my book, I don't want him to end up confused or aground.  I want to take my readers on one hell of a good ride.

And for that, it's all about the details.

Fair winds!

Christine

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