Chartplotter or Tablet in the Cockpit?

DJE

DJE

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www.casl.uk.com
We inherited an old Standard Horizon chartplotter which I mounted at the wheel and connected to the AIS transponder via old-fashioned NMEA. All was fine but it has recently given up the ghost. As a replacement I got a cheap second-hand but waterproof Android tablet. This came with up to date raster charts which I much prefer to the vector charts on the plotter. But the display is hard to read in sunlight and the old Android system is slow and a bit unreliable at times. Also I prefer buttons to a touchscreen on deck.
For a long-term replacement as a plotter at the wheel with an 7 to 10 inch display what are my options? Tempted by a rugged Windows tablet to run Opencpn the same as I have at the chart table. Then I can get the UK and French coast charts for about £90 from Visit My Harbour. But doubts about Windows reliability and a preference for buttons push me towards a "proper" chartplotter. Although it seems that I will then have to have raster charts and that they will cost a lot more than the ones I am used to getting. Are updates included with the expensive vector chart packs? And which format is best? Or can I get a plotter with raster charts?
 
I manage fine with a tablet. But of course there is no interfacing with anything, no AIS (though that is probably achievable), and visibility in daylight is not great. But compared to the old days it is magic! And I can use it for all sorts of other things heheh. I find the price of dedicated nav electronics absolutely appalling. If, as we are all supposed o do, we use the electronics as an ‘aid to navigation’ then a plotter is fine for coastal and Channel sailing. I believe
 
Chartplotter - waterproof, daylight visible, can be interfaced, hard-wired, buttons (if you choose one with buttons), and designed to do the job properly.
 
Should add that I have AIS to the tablet via wifi and the transponder outputs NMEA 0183 & 2000 so should be no problem getting AIS to the new device. In fact this is a must-have feature.

Chartplotters are expensive but decent rugged outdoor tablets aren't cheap either. The cost of vector chart packs however looks extortionate when compared to Visit My Harbour's products.
 
I started (yet another) thread about this a few months ago. Since then I've been playing with Navionics on a cheap android tablet - mine isn't waterproof so lives in a plastic bag. For creating waypoints and routes the tablet is light years ahead of the clunky plotters. Tablet visibility isn't great in some conditions, but not as bad as I thought it might be. Usability in wet conditions is the big problem, useless in one particular race.

I'm sticking with it for the far better interface and when the weather's bad will use it for the mapping and a handheld to point me at waypoints.

For the future - based on the fact that I was prepared to pay £600+ for a Garmin 276cx, I'd pay up to that for a waterproof and rugged tablet if the touch screen worked when soaked and improved on daylight viewing - even though it would be heavier with a consequently larger battery.

(For those that didn't follow my Garmin saga, I returned it for a full refund when they admitted that it wouldn't do routes properly).
 
tablet. chartplotter on deck = small display unless pay big bucks. Old ipad with inbuilt gps or bluetooth it to a bad elf or use a wifi gps/ais thingy from quark. get a waterproof blanket for the ipad. brilliant. Big. Easy to read - even in sun, cos you can move it, can be held under your nose if things are tricky. I compared with a friends 5" mounted garmin and preferred the portability of the tablet. The garmin wasn't exactly fab in bright sunshine. combine with paper on chart table or a laptop.

We currently run an old android tablet (10") which you can get for about £60 with a rugged case (about a tenner) and a 3m charging cable with raster charts, ais, regular and cheap updates to charts, and marine nav app - which is OK. In truth I preferred the maxsea time xero app for ipad (raster again as I'm not a fan of vector).

Then there's navionics on the phone, just because I can and it's £20 a year, and spend the rest on a new sail (or a bit of a new sail).
 
Sorry if im butting in. I have just started and im using a tablet for my rig. Seems like the most obvious choice for me with price and usability. If im near enough to a cafe from my boat or on the coast then I can still see all my data whilst moored. I can then watch all the boats in the harbour and sit and enjoy spotting them with a coffee. I have thought about mounting another tablet in the bedroom wall so I can view all the boats when in bed. there so cheap tablets and I can connect as many as I want to my network so it’s like having as many touch screen chart plotters as I like.

I’ve got a new 7" tablet from Amazon (soon to be another one) that is the main screen. This was £40 this is receiving its WiFi Data from quark elec A032 bi-directional converter which is £118. Which is linked to the same quark-elec A042T transponder £350. Im not a brand man at all. The reason I chose those two was mainly price because I wanted a Class B transponder that could transmit its data via WiFi. I also needed to connect speed and depth (£250) through NMEA 2000 so I would need the converter for NMEA 0183 and NMEA 2000.

Long story short I now have speed, depth, class B AIS and GPS all for about £600 which is a great deal for me. I would definitely go tablet as WiFi becomes more accessible.
 
I've never felt a need for a cockpit display so when I downloaded the Navionics app onto an IPad I already constantly used it was great at passage planning, then using at the chart table - all of the Med for £30ish.

Over the last year or two it's moved to be the prime way of navigating and paper the secondary - which surprised me as I thought I was immune to gadgetry.

But having used a sophisticated modern chartplotter set up when crewing on a friend's boat sometimes in the North Sea, if I needed a cockpit display for some reason it would be a full scale chartplotter. Very very confusing at first as he switches on (and uses) every bell and whistle but useful in a racing setting with sandbanks and poor visibility sometimes, rather than my own use in the largely fog and tide free Med where it's almost all line of site.
 
pvb said:
Have you actually experienced a modern plotter?
Click to expand...

pvb and maby

I've used a couple of brand new ones, Raymarine, not sure what models though, so quite possibly older/discounted stock. I'll take myself off to a showroom and try current stuff out, because I'm happy to have my mind changed.
 
Dont think it matters really. As long as you learn to get the best outa the kit you have.

Gazillions of students on sailing school courses get a bit ill nipping below to do navigation stuff in the first couple of days, so anything in the cockpit must be a bonus. :encouragement:
 
anoccasionalyachtsman said:
pvb and maby

I've used a couple of brand new ones, Raymarine, not sure what models though, so quite possibly older/discounted stock. I'll take myself off to a showroom and try current stuff out, because I'm happy to have my mind changed.
Click to expand...

The current generation of touch screen plotters have a user interface that is pretty similar to modern tablet based navigation solutions - but in a robust physical package that you can expect to continue to work day in, day out with waves breaking over the boat. They will not satisfy everyone - but few software packages ever do. I've used the Navionics package on my tablet and Garmin Active Captain on my phone - there are plenty of things I would change if I could, but the same is true of the Raymarine and Garmin plotters that they compliment.
 
anoccasionalyachtsman said:
I've used a couple of brand new ones, Raymarine, not sure what models though, so quite possibly older/discounted stock. I'll take myself off to a showroom and try current stuff out, because I'm happy to have my mind changed.
Click to expand...
My Standard Horizon isn't exactly new and I can put in a WP at the touch of a button and not many more touches to enter a route.
With occasional use every time you use it it's a learning curve, use it a lot and and it becomes second nature, just like using your phone.
 
In the scheme on things, spending £1.5k on a state of the art MFD and £180 on a European chart pack (CMap continental cover massive areas) does not seem unreasonable on an 11m boat that probably costs in excess of £100k.
Very happy with the B&G Zeus that has navigated me through 7,500Nm including the Stockholm and west Swedish archipelagos. Could not have managed those with paper charts and would not have liked to rely solely on a tablet.
However if I was just pottering along the UK south coast in my first 7.8m boat (pre-GPS) I'd have been astonished by the capabilities and affordability of Navionics on a phone, let alone a tablet.
 
Yes there is also the question of where do you put a fixed plotter. Frankly one of the reasons I am happy with my tablet is that there is nowhere to put a useful sized MFD in my cockpit. I do have an old SH180 plotter in a washboard, but it has a5” screen and it isn’t in a good sight line so not very easy to use. My cockpit is small and the boat old fashioned. Maybe if I had a wheel and a big binnacle it would be nice to have a big screen in front of me.
 
i installed a Vulcan 7 on my new to me boat a year ago while i was updating it. its just like using a tablet, pinch to zoom, responsive and intuitive. plus waterproof and visible in sun. plotters ae often on offer so lookout for them, mine came with Cmaps for £450 in the sales. tablets would be good for backup or plotting a course that can be uploaded to a modern plotter.
 
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