Today I was aboard the NOAA Rainier for a short cruise around Lake Washington. The Rainier is primarily used for hydrographic survey operations along the Pacific Coast and in Alaska. NOAA calls her "the most productive coastal hydrographic survey platform in the world."

While I already knew that Coastal Explorer was used aboard the Rainier, I didn't know that it was the ONLY electronic charting system used aboard!

The Rainier is frequently out performing surveys in areas that haven't ever been surveyed before, or at least not in a VERY long time. I was told that sometimes a small survey vessel is sent into an uncharted area to perform a quick survey with its multibeam swath sonar system and the resulting data is turned into a GeoTIFF image which is then loaded into Coastal Explorer and used as a primitive chart to get the Rainier safely into the area in order to finish the survey work.

Many thanks go out to the crew of the Rainier for their hospitality and the opportunity to sail with them!

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The NOAA Rainier