The Furuno rep laughed at me

[JC78]

In a good natured way. We purchased our Albin 28 just a few months ago. It came with a 10 year old Furuno 1650 Chartplotter. After getting the boat out here, the local Furuno dealer was nice enough to come to the boat and spend an hour with me, teaching me how to work all the electronics. At the end of the session, he determined that I need to order the Navionics chip that covers SF Bay (the boat was bought in MD).

Fast forward 2 months. The chip has arrived and works fine in the unit. BUT I seem to be getting tracks for more than just my boat! I went through the process to clear all the tracks off, and after a week, more appeared again. The tracks go to parts of the Bay I have never been to, even to other slips in the marina we use. And no, nobody else is using my boat. I tried to explain all this to the Furuno retailer and he was amused (he is aware just how much of a rookie I am). He calmly explianed that the set could not possibly be picking up other boats tracks. So what the hell are all these lines??? They are not depth contours, they are lines just like the track of my boat, and they go to other slips in my marina, and other marinas.

Anybody ever see this before?

[DougSea]

I think Blue Moon is sneaking out when Dad's not looking! Darn kids!

I must admit I've never heard of anything like that. Are they "possible" tracks? Meaning, they don't go over rocks or land where your boat couldn't go? Anything consistent about them to give a better hint?

[JC78]

They look exactly like my boat track. They even go into other individual slips. I think I will try clearing them all again...but I am really not imagining this...2 other experienced boaters and have asked me...unprompted..."what are all those other tracks?"

[leesteph]

Do you have an AIS unit on your boat? Or a track history function on your radar?

[JC78]

4 pics of the screen, all one zoom out from the previous pic. My boat has never been off the main channel, and only out maybe 5 times since i cleared all the tracks form memory.

[Pitou]

So what the hell are all these lines??? They are not depth contours, they are lines just like the track of my boat, and they go to other slips in my marina, and other marinas.

Anybody ever see this before?

Just a thought and fwiw as opposed to gremlins on board .... I have a Simrad plotter that will store the boats final location when the plotter is shutdown and then connect the points at location of plotter start-up. Example : shutdown when in the slip then if I power the unit on during the next trip not from my slip, but from a location along the channel further down river the unit will draw a line from my slip to my present location which can cut across points of land or just showing a very illogical course of navigation . Could this possibly be the source of your gremlins

[JC78]

No, it might explain some of the weird tracks around my marina, but since I have NEVER turned right when exiting my channel, it can't explain all those tracks southeast of my route.

JC

[DougSea]

All I can think to suggest is to clear them again, photograph the display before and after each trip, and see if it happens again. I'd also be thinking of pulling the chart chip for a week or two while doing the same thing. Maybe it's somehow overloading the plotter's memory.

It's a head scratcher, that's for sure!

[Carl]

Sure your marina isnt useing your boat as a push boat? You have been checking the hour meter, right?

[jcollins]

I don't know anything about this unit. Does it interface with your radar?

[JC78]

Yes, I have been told it does interface, but I have no idea what that means.

[jcollins]

JC,
I'm wonderting if it's picking up the tracks of other boats via your radar. Is that possible? Any other Furuno experts out there?
I like Carl's pushboat idea.

John

[Russell]

Here are the instructions to erase the tracks. If you do this and the unit is off when you leave the boat, there should be no tracks when you return.
3.6 Erasing All Track
You can erase all track. Be absolutely sure
you want to erase all track; erased track cannot
be restored.
1. Press the [MENU] key followed by the soft
keys CHART SETUP OPTIONS and
TRACK CONTROL.
2. Press the soft key ERASE TRACK. You
are asked if you sure to erase all track.
3. Press the [ENTER] key to erase, or press
the [CLEAR] key to escape.
Since this unit was last used in Maryland I do not see how it could ever have saved those tracks for your area in the first place. I am intrigued by this problem and will be very interested in the solution once you find it.

[RicM]

It's been a while since I touched my Furuno , but I wonder if your routes and tracks could be set to the same color? If so and you have "Make Route from Track" set to "on" the machine will make a track into a route and store it in memory. If routes & tracks are set to the same color they could appear very similar to the eye. Routes are stored in the machine's memory, not on the chip. Check to see if there are old routes & waypoints stored from the previous owner. Erase them all. There's probably a way to give the unit a "first birthday" which should reset all settings to default and erase all saved data. If you don't have an owners manual you should be able to find one online. I know my unit (1920) has a series of keys you hold down during start-up that puts it into setup mode, and you can reset the entire machine from there.

[JC78]

An update:

It hasn't been great boating weather, but I did get to the boat last week and deleted all tracks again. I also changed the color of all the depth contour lines. It appears that 2 or maybe all 3 of the three automatic lines (less than 10', etc) were being drawn in the same color as the course track. That doesn't explain the apparent different slips in my marina, but it might explain the "tracks" to the marinas i have never visited. The area of the bay where I have been boating can be quite shallow, so there are "less than 10' ", "less than 20'" contour lines all over the place.