Garmin -- "Dangerous Hazard"

[baz]

Was on auto pilot using Garmin 5212 and GH10 autopilot when suddenly the chart plotter display flashed "DANGEROUS HAZARD AHEAD" message (or some such wording). I slowed the boat down and looked ahead but saw nothing. I came to a stop and looked all around and saw nothing! Maybe a whale or a sub was nearby????? ... or maybe some rocks etc. I thought some and chart plotter showed I had 60 feet of water. Since nothing was visible to me I proceeded with some caution and after maybe a few hundred feet I gave up being concerned and re-engaged the autopilot and went on my merry way.

Anyone else encounter this sort of warning message ?

I will also say that maybe 30 minutes earlier the Garmin indicated it had lost the GPS signal but seemed to carry on without issues. Could this be related to the warning message somehow ?

Comments welcomed.... and thanks in advance. 🙂

 

[Tym]

Hi Baz,

Your post got my attention since an Alert with the word "Dangerous" in it could happen to any of us, including me! If and when it does, it'd be nice to know what it means ahead of time.

I looked in the Garmin 5000 Series manual (which I had previously downloaded). The Appendix shows a list of all possible Messages and Alerts. Since you weren't positive of the exact wording of your alert, I looked for the word "Dangerous" and found it appeared just twice, as follows:

AIS Dangerous Target: An AIS target currently presents a collision threat

MARPA: Dangerous Target: (radar) a MARPA target has become dangerous

By the way, I looked up "MARPA" and found it means "Mini Automatic Radar Plotting Aid", which didn't mean much to me -- so I looked that up too. Apparently you can touch the Radar screen to identify a Target, and then the Radar will track it and alert you if you get closer than the "safe distance" you preset.

So, if you have AIS installed on your Tug it might have been either one of the two Alerts. (I've shown our AIS in the Circle T photo album. It's a wonderful system in my opinion!!) If you don't have AIS but were running your Radar at the time, maybe you touched the screen and identified a target by accident and then got close to it...???

Interesting stuff. I've got to go try this out next time we're out cruising. Another topic on my long list of things to learn about...
Thanks for sharing.
Tym
Circle T

 

[baz]

Tym: Thanks for your response to my posting. I wonder if the Garmin 5212 system maintains a log of events and captures messages that were displayed. If so then that might lead me to some clue as to what all this was about. If you find out more do please post back.

[Edit]
I did a little more research on this and find there's an Event Log that can be accessed as follows

Home->Configure->System->System Information

Then on right hand side select "Event Log"

This will display the Event Log. In my case I would simply scroll to the date/time (approx) for when the alert message I posted was displayed. So in my case this would be Aug 23rd at approx 3:30pm. I should then see the exact warning message text.

I called Garmin help line 913-397-8200 (USA) and spoke with them and they indicated when I had the exact warning message text they could determine what it means and offer some clues as to what may have caused it to appear.

I will post back what I learn.

The other thing the Garmin help desk said was to be sure to keep the Garmin software up-to-date for the 5212, the GHC10 (autopilot unit) and the GHE10 (controller unit). The most current software version for the GHC10 is v2.70 and for the GHE10 it's v3.10. One can obtain the software versions for all the onboard Garmin devices as follows

Home->Configure->Communications->NEMA 2000 Setup->Device List

 

[captain's cat]

Barry, there's a Garmin Service Advisory in the tech section that says talks about this. Says that if you are using the auto course function in the autopilot, it may take you over charted hazards which will, in advance, sound a warning. I assume this may happen even if you aren't there yet. Take a look at it, it was from late last year and affects many models of Garmin Chartplotters.

Charlie

 

[baz]

I checked the Event Log and there was no evidence of the warning message. There were several GPS lost signal msgs around the time I recalled seeing the warning Msg however. For time being I'm going to dismiss this event base on last post indicating it's just "a warning".