do you really need/want a chartplotter ?

[Guest]

Wonderful gizmos.
Those snappy adverts enticing us to get the latest clever gadgets.
So we sailed our new yacht to Hamble from the builders in Sweden in 1999.
There we had a Navcentre 600 plotter fitted.Bought a magic chip (£120) to cover the SW of England and used the box of tricks for a total of forty hours in three years cruising.
Last october I switched on the box of tricks to show an old airline friend how the GPS position had improved since the errors had been removed, only to be greeted by two horizontal black lines on the screen.
Back to the local appointed 'agents' who, being unable to effect a repair, forwarded said unit back to Raytheon.
To fix......'it needs a new circuit board'.......that will be £595 plus vat plus labour, and for forty hours of service!
I can buy a hell of a lot of charts for £595 + vat + labour.
My advice......don't even think about it.
Dave Bieber
Cornwall

 

[hlb]

Hard luck. Mines been going for year without a hitch. Sounds like they want you to get a new one rather than mending it.

Personaly I would not like to be without one, but then I'm going much faster and letting the boat find it's own way home in the fog rain and crap is a lot less strain than chasing the charts and pencil round the saloon. Can understand your point of view on a rag boat though. not much else to do. But slaloming round lobster pots at 20 odd knots. Theres no time for pencils and paper. All IMHO Of course.
Haydn

 

[Guest]

You,re right

Brian

 

[RobertMartin]

Does anyone sail anymore, or are we all downbelow letting the auto pilot interface with the GPS/chartplotter!!! Your right, for a yacht there a load of rubbish.. Sailing is about wind, sails and the sea. The rest is just stuff to get fixed, taking your money away from important things, like Scotch.....
The more electronic stuff we buy the more freedom we lose...

Bobby aka Seawolf..
Freedom is the song of your soul..

 

[Twister_Ken]

Damn fine chart plotter if it's got pot bobbers plotted on it. All just so you can let the boat find its own way home at 20 kts in fog rain and crap.

Can you please post a nav warning on the board when you set out in dodgy viz?

 

[Roberto]

Most disappointing, chart plotters do not have that wonderful moisty oily smell of paper chart, nor the tiny pencil marks remembrances of passages past, one of the main reasons sailing is so wonderful

 

[ToMo]

Oh don't worry you'll see him, you'll hear him, and if you dont get out of the bloody way in time you'll feel him too!! <G>
He's not called Haydn the Dread for nothing.
TôMö

 

[ccscott49]

They are fun to play with, but I still like pencil and paper, radar gets me through the murky stuff, cheaper aswell! and if the radar fails, theres always the echo sounder and anchor and wait!

 

[claymore]

There's no rules here - its all about personal preference and I prefer to sail with the aid of modern technology rather than without it.
Your post does rather assume that that was your stance when you first got the boat.

 

[byron]

Perhaps you should have bought a Garmin. They would react with horror at one of theirs failing and replace it instantly. Don't believe me? ask anyone that has had dealings with them.

ô¿ô

 

[abraxas]

Not for everyone but I'm just about to fit an on-board computer. The thinking goes...

I'm intending heading off so will need lots of charts. An admiralty chart is now £16.30 in paper or about £10 for the ARCs electronic version, plus they don't weigh much. I'll still need a few paper small scale charts for if (when) the thing goes wrong but no way near the number I would need without the ARCs.

Also with a computer on board I'll have the basis for lots of other applications, particularly weather information.

I've had a couple of Garmin chart platters on other boats and they were great, can't speak for their back up service as they never went wrong. What I would say against them is that they tend to change the plug-in chart format quite often which is another reason I went for Admiralty ARCs.

I know there will be a great many holding there hands up in horror... ask me in five years how it worked out!