More from Andy about soundings…

The traditional lead line sounding made point measurements. The cartographer positioned them on the chart and interpolated between them by eye to draw depth contours. Cartographer and navigator alike had to assume that the gaps between the soundings were not a significantly different depth from the soundings themselves.

A worried cartographer could possibly order the surveyor to take more soundings but there would always be gaps and assumptions.

Modern sounding techniques are fundamentally different – side scan sonar imaging is effectively continuous – there are no gaps. No rocks will be missed. This can give the navigator a much higher degree of confidence than from point soundings. The soundings drawn on the chart can be positioned at the shallow bits such as isolated rocks.

So on a chart produced from a modern survey, the soundings are worst case, whereas from a traditional survey they are probably average and the spread of depth may be quite uncertain.

(caveat. Where it was particularly important to know there was a safe depth, traditional soundings were bolstered by using a drag line – if nothing caught on the line, which was set at a fixed depth with floats, then the area was entirely deeper than that.)

The source Data Diagram (SDD) on a chart tells us which type of survey was used:

My company, CherSoft, has just launched a new product called Nuno Navigator. This is a whole new direction for us. Sure we have written lots of marine software before but this time it is different, this time we are trying to sell directly to our end users. Previously, by which I mean the last 15 years, we have mostly just operated business to business. We wrote the software and someone else would sell it. Sometimes they would use their own badge and branding and sell it as their own. This is quite normal, much of the software you use is not written by the company on the box. One particular company even attended a lavish ceremony and dinner to accept an industry award for our software. We only found out about this much later.

Working as a back office company has quite suited us for quite a while. It meant that we could get on with writing software which is what we like best. It meant that we didn’t have to get too involved with things like sales and marketing which was fine too because we didn’t really like that too much anyhow. Of course there was a down side. We spent a fair bit of time worrying about contracts and specifications. We spent far too much time quibbling about how to write the software or what it should do or what it should look like. So all the time there has been that temptation to strike out on our own and actually create a software application start to finish that we can call our own.

Anyhow, we’ve decided to step out of the shadows and face the harsh and unforgiving glare of end users directly. This is a bit daunting but hopefully we are not completely unprepared. The code is pretty solid, we know a fair bit about marine navigation and we have cobbled together a website. Well ok, I know there is a bit more to it and that is what this blog is about. I’d love to say it will be a ‘how to’ on launching a new software product or a better navigation system but the reality is that we’ve still got a lot to learn and a lot to find out. So instead it is going to be ‘stuff’ with a vague theme of things associated with software and navigation. I guess it is also going to be about facing the great and wonderful public directly and probably about some of the things that happen to us along the way.