Monday night sometime our radar quit working. We seemed to be able to see a radar screen but even with a fishing boat within a stones throw – nothing on Radar. Now there are things to try to fix that – reset the Nav systems, re-install firmware, change settings, and power cycle the system. Only a few of these things are reasonable to do while underway, since a possible outcome is no Nav system at all. So we were mostly just suspicious and pretty certain that the radar wasn’t right. Coos Bay lined up with a daylight arrival to take on fuel and look into Radar problems. The plan was fuel up, get a shower and a dinner and leave. We were prepping to leave when we remembered to look into the radar – sure enough no radar. That pretty much sucks. We’d just spent two nights in fog apparently with no radar. We discussed options in a crew conference and finally decided to stay the night and walk to visit the Englund Marine Electronics (Raymarine dealer) in Coos Bay in the morning. There was no suggestion that they had a radar in stock but as we prepped to go to bed Jeff Stewart commented that it would be awesome if someone had just swapped out a Raymarine radar and there was a used one laying around. Kevin got up at 5:30 am and spent a couple hours with Raymarine tech support concluding that my radar was not radaring and needed to get replaced. Fog, fishing boats, and darkness made the no-radar scenario seem unattractive.
We trudged to Englund Marine and talked to Josh – possibly the most helpful and coolest guy in the world. First ,he put Kevin in touch with the Seattle Raymarine rep, to whom I provided my information. We bought some fishing gear and discussed our destinations and _then_ Josh said ” You know I know a guy that just replaced his Raymarine system – I could call him” A meet up was arranged and a Raymarine radome appeared -Model E70210 same unit as the one that we had. We agreed on a price installed the unit (20 feet up the mast) and tested the radar – It worked. I can’t emphasize how awesome this was. We were giddy – ecstatic, overwhelmed that we had radar again. We went and thanked everyone involved, paid for the radar and got on our way. As I type this were sailing pleasantly away from the Oregon coast.
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