ELECTRONIC NAVIGATING

[colvic]

Morning Twister;

You only display a certain amount of the chart on the screen at any one time and the viewable area is virtually real size. With my software you can print off the chart area displayed, but not for navigation purposes!!!, or the whole chart, and if you decide to do this and fasten all the sheets together the chart is original size.

Clear as mud?


Phil

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[Peppermint]

Re:I agree

Taking none marine stuff afloat normaly ends in tears. God knows the waterproof kit plays up enough.

I've sailed with loads of different types of chart plotter and the only useful one is the one infront of the helm. If you've still got to barrel down to the chart table wheres the benefit? I can't think of a laptop/screen that will last long in the great outdoors.

While I'm gadget mad ashore I admit I'm a ludite on boats. I have a GPS, that I use for Lat/Long sometimes, depth sounder and log but the rest is old school.
Whats the point of all this stuff? The only thing I do like using on other peoples boats is radar. I think it would be an indulgence on a 25ft boat like mine but it does something I can't do. Like see through fog.

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[ccscott49]

Re:I agree

I have laptop aboard, but I do have a wheelhouse. I've had laptops aboard now for 8 years, but only got chart plotting this year, I used the laptop for work. I also tended to use all old methods, apart from GPS now. But with the amount of distance I do now, paper charts are just too expensive, so I use a chart plotter, Navichart, with worldwide charts. Cheaper. By the way never had a minutes trouble with any laptop, or for that matter any electronics onboard, even those outside, I also have a big piece of wood in my hands!! I would consider a waterproof screen, plugged into my laptop, which would be the best of both worlds. IMHO

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[NigeCh]

A little story

Last August I was on a posh boat making an 1800 mile passage - some ocean and mostly coastal. On it was a laptop blocking the chart table so the saloon table was used for paper charts. Part way through the passage the laptop chart plotter indicated that we were sailing through a range of mountains. Mark 1 eyball seemed to indicate that we were still sailing on the sea and a couple of bearings with the handheld compass confirmed what the handheld GPS's were saying on the paper charts that we were 14 miles offshore.

An investigation was undertaken and eventually it was found that there were several de-calibrations that had occurred in the completely integrated electronic systems. The instruction manuals trouble shooting sections for re-calibration were followed as best they could be whilst at sea and .... Well, eventually we got the whole electronic state-of-the-art system to sort of agree with the paper charts but .... ie to get the radar and software chart overlays to agree with the pencil lines and plots drawn on the paper charts.

IMO, electronic charts are all very well as long as they work, but in a wholly integrated system if one item fails, it seems to throw everything else out ... There has to be a failsafe backup to verify that the integrated electronic systems are working correctly ... and that comes down to paper, pencil and a handheld GPS. (If the latter fails then it's out with the sextant and all that that entails.)

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[markdj]

It depends what you are most comfortable using. Some people like plotters for their dedicated use and loads of buttons giving direct access to navigating stuff. Others like a PC with a mouse and with good software it can be a great job, providing things are easy to use and dependable. For a dedicated plotter, I would say go for either a Furuno, Garmin or Raymarine. To be honest, you may need to wait for Southhampton Boat show as you really DO need to try these babies out first as some people's idea of ease of use is different to others An in depth scan of their respective websites is in order.

Myself, I can't get away from using a PC. I have posted about this before, but out of all the software systems I have tried (and that includes SeaPro, the Captn and Navmaster) I found Seatrak to be the best interface and so easy to use.

Check out my previous post here.

http://www.mini-itx.com

Hope this helps


MarkDJ
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.stronge.org.uk>http://www.stronge.org.uk</A>
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