Does anyone still sail without a chart plotter?

[Topcat47]

I don't keep a bespoke chart plotter on board, but I do use an iPad mini which has replaced an old laptop. I also update my paper charts regularly when sailing. Daysailing in home waters I never use it.

 

[lustyd]

I did have a quiet chuckle at the thought of chart depths being more useful than a depth sounder for collision avoidance. IMHO a depth charger would be even more useful for scaring off submarines.;-)

With the depth sounder you know how deep it is, not how deep it's going to be. A good appropriate chart will show where the edges of the channel are, you may not be able to get as close, but you won't crash into anything a sounder would have avoided. A depth sounder alone will show you current depth - without a chart and position you may very well end up on a sand bar. Laminar flow thinks plotters are the video game, yet ironically sails while looking at an electronic display of depth until that depth reads a certain figure and then turns at the last minute - remind you of anything?

 

[LONG_KEELER]

Being mostly a single hander, I admit to being disoriented a couple of times. Once crossing the North Sea. In both cases, I was very tired. Sorted myself out, but to have had my tablet with MX mariner charts as a secondary fix would have been lovely.

My motto is have whatever you want and turn it on as and when you feel the need. I think it's more fun to
use more traditional methods sometimes but only if you feel like doing so.

Before GPS, I remember crossing the Thames Estuary on a falling tide with heavy rain, and I followed depth contours using the sounder the whole way back. Very satisfying , but I suffered a headache the whole of the next day.

 

[Adios]

With the depth sounder you know how deep it is, not how deep it's going to be. A good appropriate chart will show where the edges of the channel are, you may not be able to get as close, but you won't crash into anything a sounder would have avoided. A depth sounder alone will show you current depth - without a chart and position you may very well end up on a sand bar. Laminar flow thinks plotters are the video game, yet ironically sails while looking at an electronic display of depth until that depth reads a certain figure and then turns at the last minute - remind you of anything?

Reminds me of going out on a friends new and first boat, fishing boat with a foot of draft. He had a depth sounder and was glued to it as we went back in towards the Deben bar at fairly low water. My boat at the time was lifting keel with a pop up rudder as the only depth sounder so I'd learnt that you can read the water surface to have a pretty good idea of what was shallow and deep. The thing he found when it went too shallow was he had no way to have a best guess on which way to turn for deeper water. Like all the conveniences if it means you don't have to use a mental faculty you won't develop that mental faculty.

 

[PhillM]

many people say they do this, but how do you do it when you are helming the boat, trimming the sails, and keeping an eye on traffic?

Use a wind vane. It steers, without using power. Trim the sails and the vane steers to them.

 

[capnsensible]

With the depth sounder you know how deep it is, not how deep it's going to be. A good appropriate chart will show where the edges of the channel are, you may not be able to get as close, but you won't crash into anything a sounder would have avoided. A depth sounder alone will show you current depth - without a chart and position you may very well end up on a sand bar. Laminar flow thinks plotters are the video game, yet ironically sails while looking at an electronic display of depth until that depth reads a certain figure and then turns at the last minute - remind you of anything?

With not a lot of practice, contour following using a chart and the echo sounder is straight forward. You can often work up a position too. Without gps. It's a neat thing to be able to do. ?

 

[johnalison]

Being mostly a single hander, I admit to being disoriented a couple of times. Once crossing the North Sea. In both cases, I was very tired. Sorted myself out, but to have had my tablet with MX mariner charts as a secondary fix would have been lovely.

My motto is have whatever you want and turn it on as and when you feel the need. I think it's more fun to
use more traditional methods sometimes but only if you feel like doing so.

Before GPS, I remember crossing the Thames Estuary on a falling tide with heavy rain, and I followed depth contours using the sounder the whole way back. Very satisfying , but I suffered a headache the whole of the next day.

That is for me the main point of plotters. They make sailing very much less tiring. All the time spent below bent over the chart table and starting to feel a bit sick is very stressful, and this itself leads to poor decisions. For all their failings, I reckon they must have saved many craft, not from poor chartwork and navigational errors but by keeping sailors fresh.

 

[Laminar Flow]

I did have a quiet chuckle at the thought of chart depths being more useful than a depth sounder for collision avoidance. IMHO a depth charger would be even more useful for scaring off submarines.;-)

To be fair, you really are less likely to have a collision with a deep sea vessel in water less than 12m deep. Even a sub, for that matter. As to running aground, that is another matter entirely.
Sailing in the Dutch Waddenzee we did find, by the use of our keel as a sounding instrument, that charted depths can and do change within a single season and no matter how shallow, you cannot really see the bottom either, due to the water's natural turbidity.

 

[prv]

many people say they do this, but how do you do it when you are helming the boat, trimming the sails, and keeping an eye on traffic?

Some of us have friends ?


Actually I do sail singlehanded quite often. The autopilot steers, cruising boats don’t need second-to-second sail trimming, and I don’t choose the moment when there are six other vessels converging on me to go and plot a fix. Outside of the central Solent (where I don’t need a chart) traffic doesn’t happen so fast that I can’t take a look all round and then safely focus on something else for a minute.

Pete

 

[NorthRising]

many people say they do this, but how do you do it when you are helming the boat, trimming the sails, and keeping an eye on traffic?

If I have crew then I step below and plot the position, leaving another at the helm. If on my own then I heave to and then step below and plot position. A quick look before going below, scribble the coordinates from GPS into the log, get the Breton plotter and dividers, plot position. All of two minutes work.

 

[Gary Fox]

Allegedly: It is amusing, the night before an early morning departure on a well-planned passage, for younger crew members to wait until the skipper is soundly asleep, then switch on the chartplotter and re-name all the next day's painstakingly planned WPT's with obscene, politically incorrect or otherwise amusing titles. So I'm told.

 

[Stemar]

Seems to me that a plotter, like most things, is a good servant, but a poor master. A very useful tool, but one which, like all tools, has limitations. It's no substitute for proper passage planning, nor is it a substitute for the Mk1 eyeball and a bit of commons sense. When I did my Day Skipper, there wasn't one on board, so we learned "proper" navigation. Now, I reckon DS should still teach "proper" navigation, but should also teach the safe use of the plotter, which includes the danger of spending too much time looking at the screen to the detriment of spacial awareness.

 

[jimi]

To be fair, you really are less likely to have a collision with a deep sea vessel in water less than 12m deep. Even a sub, for that matter. As to running aground, that is another matter entirely.
Sailing in the Dutch Waddenzee we did find, by the use of our keel as a sounding instrument, that charted depths can and do change within a single season and no matter how shallow, you cannot really see the bottom either, due to the water's natural turbidity.

The East Coast is similar being shallow and muddy, the issue with shallower water is pots, which are often semi submerged! When we kept the boat in Cornwall we panicked if the depth was lest than 10m. Personally I've found eyesight being the best means of collision avoidance!

 

[capnsensible]

Seems to me that a plotter, like most things, is a good servant, but a poor master. A very useful tool, but one which, like all tools, has limitations. It's no substitute for proper passage planning, nor is it a substitute for the Mk1 eyeball and a bit of commons sense. When I did my Day Skipper, there wasn't one on board, so we learned "proper" navigation. Now, I reckon DS should still teach "proper" navigation, but should also teach the safe use of the plotter, which includes the danger of spending too much time looking at the screen to the detriment of spacial awareness.

The practical course does. ?

 

[Clancy Moped]

Paper first plotter as a backup.

 

[Daydream believer]

No doubt that plotters have made sailing much safer and encouraged people to push on a bit further. But personally I'm very comfortable living without anything but the echo sounder.......

I did my ICC out of Bradwell. Would never have needed a chart plotter,- Would not have known how to use it if they had; but felt totally lost not having an echo sounder to look at, even when in the middle of the Blackwater
Couldn't believe that they would keep it down below out of sight of the helm, when the boat is on the east coast.
Echo sounder & compass are every bit as important as a chart plotter on the east coast

 

[Graham376]

The practical course does. ?

Glad to hear it. When I did the CS practical week and then the YM exam weekend, we weren't allowed to use gps, even on the blind navigation exercise. What does puzzle me is when some people spend considerable sums on plotters, why do they mount them below (often alongside radar) where they can't be seen from the helm or cockpit? Seems to defeat the object of having one.

 

[LONG_KEELER]

That is for me the main point of plotters. They make sailing very much less tiring. All the time spent below bent over the chart table and starting to feel a bit sick is very stressful, and this itself leads to poor decisions. For all their failings, I reckon they must have saved many craft, not from poor chartwork and navigational errors but by keeping sailors fresh.

With you there.

I would say we probably take on some passages, that pre GPS we may not have done.

Not that we couldn't complete and enjoy the challenge but as a de stressor depending on circumstances.

 

[Adios]

Glad to hear it. When I did the CS practical week and then the YM exam weekend, we weren't allowed to use gps, even on the blind navigation exercise. What does puzzle me is when some people spend considerable sums on plotters, why do they mount them below (often alongside radar) where they can't be seen from the helm or cockpit? Seems to defeat the object of having one.

Maybe an excuse to sit in the dry while the helm or autohelm gets wet?

 

[JumbleDuck]

Glad to hear it. When I did the CS practical week and then the YM exam weekend, we weren't allowed to use gps, even on the blind navigation exercise. What does puzzle me is when some people spend considerable sums on plotters, why do they mount them below (often alongside radar) where they can't be seen from the helm or cockpit? Seems to defeat the object of having one.

Equally it beats me why people mount a complicated piece of equipment, capable of all sorts of things, where all it does in practice is to tell someone to steer right or left a bit. A plotter mounted in front of the wheel doesn't look very practical for passage planning.