Course Up?

nigelmercier said:
The latest Navionics (spit!) iPad app features "Course Up" mode. I occasionally use this mode on my TomTom when driving in a town, but normally use North Up.

On a boat "Course Up" mode seems ridiculous. Is there something I'm missing?
Click to expand...

Yes, there are many, including me who always use course up. It's not the only way, but some prefer it.

The reason I like it is that the screen in front of me directly relates to the view in front of me. It makes collision avoidance and steering more "natural" .

Of course, if you are lost it's easier to use it in north up mode, but I never get lost.
 
nigelmercier said:
The latest Navionics (spit!) iPad app features "Course Up" mode. I occasionally use this mode on my TomTom when driving in a town, but normally use North Up.

On a boat "Course Up" mode seems ridiculous. Is there something I'm missing?
Click to expand...

Yes, there are many, including me who always use course up. It's not the only way, but some prefer it.

The reason I like it is that the screen in front of me directly relates to the view in front of me. It makes collision avoidance and steering more "natural" .

Of course, if you are lost it's easier to use it in north up mode, but I never get lost.
 
I guess it's a personal preference thing - but I would always use north up, to match the chart in my head.

Before decent fluxgate compasses, budget radars were heading-up because that's all the technology could do. I imagine there are a fair number here who got used to that and now use their radars in course-up mode (basically head-up with some damping). But having got a radar for the first time last year, I'm sticking with the advice in Robert Avis's book that "no professional seafarer should ever use anything but north-up".

Pete
 
Always use north-up on the plotter, I find it much easier to relate to. As for radar, I usually view it as a chart overlay, so also north-up.
 
Always north up for the chart but I used course up on my last radar because the screen was "portrait mode" and I got a clearer view for further ahead. My current e7 is in "landscape" format, so course up would give me the least view ahead, so I have changed to North up. The boat's heading is clearly displayed, so it soon becomes second nature.
 
I tend to use course up on my plotter, certainly when racing offshore. From a racing point of view, I am only interested whether I will make a mark on a particular tack, whether I need to gybe etc. The geography is unimportant, it's the mark that counts.
 
Used to use North up but my wife found it a lot easier with course up and use that now and never had an issue with either, leaving it as course up just makes life easier, rather than keep changing it depending on who is helming.
 
North up for passages, it relates more simply to the big paper chart. But for pilotage it's course up, going up the Little Russell at 4am it was very helpful to have the Navionics screen showing a representation of what I was looking at out of the wheelhouse, those moments of stress when we couldn't find a light it was good to have the intuitive approach I'm used to with the in-car satnav.
 
Lazy Kipper said:
...it was good to have the intuitive approach I'm used to with the in-car satnav.
Click to expand...

Having sailed with plotters of various sorts for far longer than satnav for cars have been around it irritates the life out of me that I've not been able to find N Up on the few in car sat navs I've tried - give me a road map anytime...

... and if its not clear from that little rant, I'm a N Up person :) (even for pilotage)
 
If I really wanted to wind my wife up, I used to leave my old B&W plotter on course-up. Not only did this disconnect the display from anything she was used to but the writing would go all peculiar, being vaguely vertical but the letters still upright, and almost unreadable. She has her own ways of messing up the plotter, but usually by accident than by design, I think.
 
nigelmercier said:
The latest Navionics (spit!) iPad app features "Course Up" mode. I occasionally use this mode on my TomTom when driving in a town, but normally use North Up.

On a boat "Course Up" mode seems ridiculous. Is there something I'm missing?
Click to expand...

A agree i hate anyrhing other than north up. I dont turn my chart upside down when heading south.

When teaching i find a small minority like head up. They are more likely to be women.
And I've taught a few fighter pilots. They can only do head up.
 
Swmbo left the tablet on top of the fluxgate compass the other day and it put the reading out by 180 degrees (at least I think it was that).

Made it very interesting on the Radar and Plotter as we effectively had North up on the Plotter and South Up on the radar.

:confused:
 
I find this "it relates to the chart" excuse for north up quite dinosaur like. I guess it depends on age and what you are used to.

One of my favourite books is "We the Navigators". The story of how the peoples of the pacific navigated from island to island over thousands of miles without maps. Essentially, they used to view themselves as static, and the picture of the moon, stars, sun and swell as something that moved past them. They knew how the picture was supposed to change, and what to do if it changed the wrong way. It just shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

I learnt to navigate in a plane at 120 knots. Basically you couldn't draw lines or use your hands as if you did the plane fell out of the sky. (Please do not make this a discussion about trim. Not all aircraft are stable in three axes!). To navigate sensibly you had to relate what you saw outside to a map in front of you. To me it was a nonsense to look in front of me and see the earth moving from front to back, and then to look down and see myself moving potentially from back to front or side to side. Or diagonally.

I only get charts out in port when I am thinking about where to go, what the wind and tide are doing etc. Basically only for planning.

The fact that fighter pilots who have to react and navigate faster than almost anyone alive prefer head up is proof that it is a better system. If most sailors prefer north up it just proves that they go too slow, think too slow, or were born before head up was an option.

Clearly I should have been a fighter pilot.
 
I always use North up, always have as its suits the way I think (chart in head). I was sailing with a mate of mine who took the helm for a while and changed to course up with the argument you can see where you are looking. I tried it for about 2-3 hours to see if I was missing something and just could not get on with it. Horses for courses fair enough but, its North up for me.
 
'Course up' sounds like some new form of hell I've not discovered yet.

Is this for people that turn a-z maps upside down?
 
Ex-SolentBoy said:
I find this "it relates to the chart" excuse for north up quite dinosaur like. I guess it depends on age and what you are used to.
Click to expand...

It probably does depend on what you're used to - and I'm used to charts!

I'm sure I'm younger than you.

Surely anyone who's been to school in the UK is used to a map where England is above France, though? And I like them to stay that way round when I sail between them.

Ex-SolentBoy said:
If most sailors prefer north up it just proves that they go too slow,
Click to expand...

Relative to aeroplanes we do go slow! That's the nature of sailing.

Ex-SolentBoy said:
think too slow
Click to expand...

Surely your point about aeroplanes and fighter pilots was that head up is good when there isn't time to think. By that logic, on a slow-moving boat it's the folk who need course-up who are thinking slowly!

Ex-SolentBoy said:
or were born before head up was an option.
Click to expand...

On radar, head-up was there first.

:)

Pete
 
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