Has your chartplotter ever broken down?

[rotrax]

Never had a plotter failure, all Raymarine kit on two UK based boats, Garmin on our Kiwi boat.

Had a card failure though!

Two files missing from the Navionics card supplied with a new C80 plotter, Beaulieu River to Lands End.

Guess where we were going......................................................

 

[RupertW]

I don’t have a chartplotter but I haven’t yet had my phone stop working on the boat, and do have another 3 GPS devices on the boat so having a position would be possible if there wasn’t a GPS satellite outage.

 

[LadyInBed]

Just before Standard Horizon pulled out of the CP business I upgraded my 180i to a 300i the only problem I've had was on the power cable plug giving a bad connection and I once had to reseat the chart cartridge, again a bad connection.
I recently resurrected my 180i and fitted it as a backup because it was laying around doing nothing.
One of the features that the SH provide is the ability to zoom in or out and maintain the same level of detail that you were previously seeing, I don't know if any other make has that feature.

 

[pvb]

It's really amazing the build quality of the older raymarine machines. I would make the comparison to the GRP boats of the 70s and 80s to the new production boats!

Today's production boats are built to much higher standards than those in the 70s.

 

[savageseadog]

My Garmin 550 failed - working in the evening, next morning deado. I replaced it with a Garmin 551 which also failed similarly 1 month out of guarantee. Garmin washed their hands of it (a legacy product after 2 years, apparently) so I opened it up to find water ingress. Each of the 6 case retaining bolts had been torqued so the plastic around them had cracked. I did without a plotter for 2 months whilst wrangling with Garmin and didn't miss it much as I prefer Navionics in my pocket (and on my 3 spare devices) to a fixed display. Eventually, after threatening legal action against the unfortunate and blameless retailer, I was given a fixed GPS as a replacement, which I preferred. My replacement boat has 2 plotters - Garmin. I won't be replacing them when they fail.
I'm a bit surprised at the lack of ingress protection in marine instruments in general. I have a €9 Decathlon watch with which I have snorkeled down to 10m many times during 8 years of ownership. It is still going strong even after a battery change.

Had the same water ingress issue with a Garmin 551. It was replaced FOC.

 

[jordanbasset]

Once in 15 years a Raymarine RL70, no issue just reverted to the Garmin handheld

 

[Kukri]

Never had a plotter failure, all Raymarine kit on two UK based boats, Garmin on our Kiwi boat.

Had a card failure though!

Two files missing from the Navionics card supplied with a new C80 plotter, Beaulieu River to Lands End.

Guess where we were going......................................................

Snap!

Lovely new Raymarine ES127 plotter. On passage up the Channel the Navionics card went blank from off Eastbourne (where we were) to off Lowestoft (we were heading for Harwich!)

Used Imray paper charts up to Dover, but Imray folios don’t cover Long Sand Head so, being briefly in cell phone range I bought and downloaded the charts from there to Harwich onto my IPhone and finished the journey on that and the paper charts.

Sent the card, with a remarkably polite letter, all things considered, to Navionics, and they replaced it, without a word of contrition or apology.

 

[johnalison]

I have had a Raytheon as it was b&w R72 (I think), and a Raymarine e7, for 12 & 8 years respectively. I have never had a hardware issue with them, including the radar, but both have crashed occasionally, more with the R72. On each case it has taken the set a minute or two to re-boot. This hasn’t generally caused difficulty, though there was one occasion in the North Sea when I was worried for a few minutes.

 

[Topcat47]

My old PC plotter was a nightmare at times. Remember the "blue screen of death" that plagued windows? My iPad has never missed a beat in four years, but I still keep paper charts going on passage.

 

[Corribee Boy]

Sailing NE from Brixham toward the Exe with Teignmouth on the port beam, I realised my Lowrance was showing land to my starboard. I stared hard to see what it was up to, and realised the chart was somehow showing me in the Bristol Channel - a transposition of 100 miles or so.

I have no explanation - there wasn't even a US task group nearby.

 

[lustyd]

I sat on the GPS puck on a charter boat once by accident and lost position, but no the plotter was fine while the radio bleeped about loss of position. On my boats no, the main plotter has never had an issue, neither has the handheld Garmin GPSMap, either of my GPS enabled phones or my GPS watches which also have charts on them. Nor the iPad with GPS and charts or the laptops. I've also never had a problem with the DSC handheld VHF with GPS built in.

But I still keep the paper and compass and have 4 sharp 2B pencils at the ready just in case the above somehow all fail, or a warship is playing silly buggers with the signals...again

 

[LittleSister]

There's useful guidance on the (un)reliability of GPS (and other) systems and kit in the RIN publication on electronic navigation, that Sarabande recently provided a link to - https://cdn.ymaws.com/rin.org.uk/resource/resmgr/groupresources/smallcraft/ElecNavFinal.pdf

My Standard Horizon CP300i went strange for a few minutes off Normandy a few years back. Afterwards our recorded track followed our real route along the coast and then briefly zig-zagged violently north most of the way across the channel, then south inland before resuming where the boat actually was.

I also had a temporary problem a year or two later with the plotter occasionally switching off because of verdigris(?) on the supply/signal socket on the back of the unit.

I have just remembered that on one occasion I was sailing up the the River Orwell on the starboard side of buoyed (ship) channel, towards the bridge and probably not far from Woolverstone. I happened to glance at the plotter (which I don't necessarily have on in home waters), and was startled to see it showed me passing over the drying area to the north of the channel. A few moments of confusion prevailed while I looked around to double check I was actually in the channel as I'd thought. I concluded that the channel and buoyage must have moved north at some time previous, and that this wasn't yet reflected in my electronic chart (I can't remember if it was 'officially' out of date at that point). A few minutes later I zoomed in or out on the chart, and to my surprise at that different scale it now correctly showed me in the channel. I was a bit preoccupied with some aspect of boat-handling at the time, and intended to investigate more thoroughly later, but completely forgot about it.

On another occasion, somewhere vaguely near Paimpol, it was showing us doing 14 knots SOG despite the log only showing 4.5 knots and the boat's max speed was little more than 5 knots, and both the plotter and paper chart claimed that the tide was slack in the area at that time. At the time I put it down to 9.5 knots of errant/unpredicted tide, but who knows whether it was some GPS gremlin?

Generally it's been very reliable, though, and much appreciated, but I always have paper charts, even if only small scale, both to follow my general progress, and in case of failure of the GPS.

Years before, it was a different world. I remember being pleased to be able to supplement my traditional 'paper' navigation by buying a hand-held GPS for crossings Devon to Brittany. It ate dry cell batteries at an impressive rate, so it was mainly in case of emergency, and I would just switch it on briefly three or four times on the trip across to see if it broadly agreed with where I thought I was. Particularly useful when closing the coast sleep-deprived, having done a very long crossing single-handed, and not wanting to be having to first close the coast to confirm where I was before heading one way or the other to find the harbour.

 

[capnsensible]

I sat on the GPS puck on a charter boat once by accident and lost position, but no the plotter was fine while the radio bleeped about loss of position. On my boats no, the main plotter has never had an issue, neither has the handheld Garmin GPSMap, either of my GPS enabled phones or my GPS watches which also have charts on them. Nor the iPad with GPS and charts or the laptops. I've also never had a problem with the DSC handheld VHF with GPS built in.

But I still keep the paper and compass and have 4 sharp 2B pencils at the ready just in case the above somehow all fail, or a warship is playing silly buggers with the signals...again

How do warships 'play silly buggers' with a gps signal?

 

[lustyd]

Surprisingly easily. There are often NTMs explaining what they will be doing.

 

[boyblue]

The only time I had a problem with my RL70c was soon after the boat was launched, the screen froze during a choppy channel crossing. One of the many plugs in the back had fallen out, quickly rectified as it was a plug I could see from the side inspection cover.
The next and last time was another screen freeze, this took much longer to trace to another plug , small, unsighted, and right at the extreme reach through the inspection cover hard against a bulk head. Never to happen again since pushing all plugs right home.

One or two other poor commissioning faults, one was the genoa furling drum coming loose half way between Lowestoft and Ijmuiden in a SW 7 single handed. I just clipped on, went forward to untangle the furling line and wait to reassemble the drum correctly at Ijmuiden. A nut and bolt check throughout the boat discovered many more faults including the key in the wheel falling out on the Stour.
By the time I sold the yacht 7 years later it was put together as well as could be expected.

 

[prv]

How do warships 'play silly buggers' with a gps signal?

The signal down here at the surface is pretty weak, so it’s easy to jam with a transmitter designed for the purpose. GPS denial is absolutely part of modern warfare.

Pete

 

[capnsensible]

Surprisingly easily. There are often NTMs explaining what they will be doing.

Could you link to one?

 

[LiftyK]

1) When approaching the Channel Islands with two plotters onboard, they gave different readings. Moral of the story: use one plotter or three.
2) At the start of a cruise, my plotter would start up then stop. Removing corrosion from the power cord pins fixed it.

 

[capnsensible]

The signal down here at the surface is pretty weak, so it’s easy to jam with a transmitter designed for the purpose. GPS denial is absolutely part of modern warfare.

Pete

So in a peacetime situation then, notice is given of excercises that involve gps denial? I've not sailed uk waters for a while so it sounds interesting as to how that is managed.

 

[Koeketiene]

Surprisingly easily. There are often NTMs explaining what they will be doing.

At one time in my not always illustrious carreer, I spent some time with these people: NATO Joint Electronic Warfare Core Staff (JEWCS)

Playing 'silly buggers' with the GPS signal was one of the things we did for a living (amongst other things).
Mainly during major exercises 'up north' and a couple of times 'for real' in the Med.