Are sailors addicted to TECH

[Elessar]

I would never sail in waters where adequate large-scale charts were not on board. A folio-sized chart or harbour plan to hand is much more useful to me than the screen of a plotter six or more feet away. This might even be the case if I had a binnacle. For most trips, I do not need to stare at a chart or even refer to it very often if I have worked out a route and can display the course and distance to the next waypoint. In fact, it is much safer for me to do this, having studied the route in the comfort of the saloon at my leisure rather than attempt to navigate on the hoof. It would be nice to be able to display radar in the cockpit, but here again the iPad can do this if I wish.

My newer plotter is waterproof but for my sailing the inside position is much better. I see no reason to assert that a plotter, or any other sailing tool, 'should' be used in a particular way.

Fine. We have to agree to differ. I can see no reason to keep valuable information from the helm. Makes no sense at all to me but it’s your boat.

 

[Stemar]

I would thing that the ideal for a wheel steered boat would be a plotter below at the nav station with a repeater in easy view of the helm, especially when solo or short handed. I can see the disadvantage for a tiller in a big cockpit, but even if it's too far away to read details, at least you can see enough to keep out of the green bits!

That doesn't have to be an expensive option - a tablet in a waterproof case running Navionics or similar would do both jobs, so that's plan A for Jazzcat.