Causeway and effect!

What real use is a handheld chartplotter?

Instead of a hand-held backup GPS, I'm thinking of buying one of these Raymarine RC400 units at the discounted price of £190 (or £300 incl Navionics Gold chart of the whole of the British Isles & N France).

Does anyone have any experience of the unit?

And... err...do I really need one? We sail a small yacht pretty slowly, using paper charts and a Yeoman chartplotter interfaced to the ship's GPS. It seems to me that the display on any h/h plotter would be too small to be of any real use, and this unit cannot be interfaced with a laptop to give a bigger picture.

The argument in favour of a simple h/h GPS (a Garmin GPS60) is that it can be plugged into a laptop for occassional chartplotting use (say in dense fog), but its real purpose is as an emergency backup to position fix.

What does the esteemed company think?
 
Sorry - meant to post a new thread on PBO forum!

Seems I'm befuddled by the new ybw website.

I'll go take my pills now....
 
Ridiculous that they got rescued when they could have got out and walked... and even more ridiculous that a helicopter was used at an estimated cost (according to the article) of something like £4,000.
 
gregandginas said:
Ridiculous that they got rescued when they could have got out and walked... and even more ridiculous that a helicopter was used at an estimated cost (according to the article) of something like £4,000.
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Even if doing nothing, the helicopter, its crew, and the co-ordination services cost a ton of money just waiting. In that case it makes tremendous sense to treat the whole exercise as a training opportunity, with the only additional cost being the fuel - I don't know but would that cost £4,000 for the outing? Or do SAR/news organisations just bandy made-up quotes around with complete abandon?
 
gregandginas said:
Ridiculous that they got rescued when they could have got out and walked... and even more ridiculous that a helicopter was used at an estimated cost (according to the article) of something like £4,000.
Click to expand...
Have you ever been there? If so you would know that the current is fast flowing and it was in my opinion safer to stay with the car.
 
Yes I have, I have a mooring there. The car, if moronically driven into water 18" deep will stop. At that time the rational adults will conclude: Aha, we should walk back to dry land and safety.

But the morons do not, they remain as the tide gets ever higher, sometimes to the roof. Whereapon they get rescued.

At the mo the rescue is a freebie, If they were charged £4,000 for the rescue.....................
 
Causeway

Maybe they should simply put up a sign saying - Rescue charge £4,000. Might make the idiots thinks twice!
 
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