Idiots guide to GPS plotting

[steveghoward]

Hi all,

We are off to the South of France for the summer on our boat which currently has no chart plotting on board. I have been thinking of buying something on the lines of a Nexus and adding Navionics to it and, having looked for threads on this forums have managed to tie myself in knots working out what it all means.

A friend has told me about a Sea pro system he had attached to his laptop although he has since sold his boat. I have looked on their website and it does look like a option if I take my lap top out (running Vista)with me, although if I go for the standard version with the Med. chart option the price does seem to be getting on towards a dedicated chart plotter GPS (Garmin etc). Would the Sea Pro lite be adequate for basic navigation between ports/ anchorages along the French Med coast? Is there any other laptop based nav. system which is compatible/ better?

Could someone let me know their thoughts on the sea pro/navionics/dedicated GPS options in words of one syllable(or less!). ,If it is the laptop version then I presume I will need to input a gps plot to it. I have a Garmin 172h handheld GPS. Is it possible to use this and how would it be connected to the laptop?

Thank you for any advice. Please be gentle with me!

Regards

 

[Iain C]

Where are you starting from and going to? What boat is it?

Assuming your trip is not towing your speedboat down the French motorway system and just waterskiing around Monaco harbour, and you have a 12v system on board, personally I'd be going for a dedicated marine plotter...far less to go wrong than a laptop, less power requirements, and often waterproof and mountable (and visible) outside.

You can get a USB GPS dongle for the laptop quite cheaply if you want to play with that, and just keep your 172 as backup.

 

[Norman_E]

I agree with Iain C. You can connect the Garmin 172 to a laptop, but you need Garmin's special cable that connects the GPS to a serial port plug. As laptops don't have serial ports you then need a USB to serial port adapter. The two parts will cost more than a USB GPS dongle, moreover the cable that connects the GPS to the serial port occupies the socket that lets you connect the GPS to a 12 volt supply, so you then burn up AA batteries in the GPS!

 

[[70521]]

Hi Steve

An option would be to get something like a Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx and plug that into your laptop. It can also be used for walking, driving, flying and boating and is done with a mini USB cable.

Have fun

 

[steveghoward]

Where are you starting from and going to? What boat is it?

Assuming your trip is not towing your speedboat down the French motorway system and just waterskiing around Monaco harbour, and you have a 12v system on board, personally I'd be going for a dedicated marine plotter...far less to go wrong than a laptop, less power requirements, and often waterproof and mountable (and visible) outside.

You can get a USB GPS dongle for the laptop quite cheaply if you want to play with that, and just keep your 172 as backup.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

We have an Oceanis 36 centre cockpit, currently in store at Gruissan. We shall be cruising along the coast to Menton/Italian border.

regards

 

[Twister_Ken]

Overcomplicated. Stick with paper charts. Use your 172 to create waypoints in the centre of compass roses. Pick the nearest rose waypoint. Then dead easy to plot bearing and distance to waypoint on the paper chart.

It's the Med. No tides, not much likelihood of rotten visibility.

 

[westernman]

Overcomplicated. Stick with paper charts. Use your 172 to create waypoints in the centre of compass roses. Pick the nearest rose waypoint. Then dead easy to plot bearing and distance to waypoint on the paper chart.

It's the Med. No tides, not much likelihood of rotten visibility.

+1

Also if you buy the Navicarte ChartKit Med charts package from the chandlers (for Gruissan to the Italian boarder you will want Med-04 and Med-03), this will give you all the charts you need, including detailed chartlet inserts for almost all the marinas and it comes with a CD which provides you with the basic functionality of a chart plotter if you hook it up to a NMEA GPS input (via a NMEA to USB adapter).

Each package sells for about 100 euros and includes 20 separate charts or so.
Just the paper charts and a hand held GPS will be just fine for the area you are navigating.

You could probably get away with just the chart extracts in Bloc Marine (about 28 euros from Chandlers) which is the Med equivalent of Reeds.

You might want to have a look here:-

http://www.ruedelamer.com/kit-de-navigation-chartkit-france-navicarte.html

 

[westernman]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

We have an Oceanis 36 centre cockpit, currently in store at Gruissan. We shall be cruising along the coast to Menton/Italian border.

regards

Why go East? IMHO West - Costa Brava, Minorca etc is much more interesting starting from Gruissan.

 

[bitbaltic]

Overcomplicated. Stick with paper charts. Use your 172 to create waypoints in the centre of compass roses. Pick the nearest rose waypoint. Then dead easy to plot bearing and distance to waypoint on the paper chart.

It's the Med. No tides, not much likelihood of rotten visibility.

Another +1. That's my usual nav style and it's surprisingly quick.

 

[Daydream believer]

paper charts are always best but if you hook a yoeman plotter up to a Garmin 128 or similar you can set waypoints etc in seconds,
You can see where you are on the chart very easily & can always revert to chart only use in an electrical emergency
you can see the "whole picture" rather than just a bit on a chart plotter
With the correct chart you can use it in any part of the world
After 10 years I have just purchased a Lorenz chart plotter because I have finally bought AIS
First thoughts are that the chart plotter does not hold a candle to the Yeoman
Plus it will not cost £275-00 because I want to up date a chart for an area
My Garmin has a deck repeater from NASA ( clipper) so i can set a rough course then check every so often on the Yeoman
I even have a deck socket so if I really need to I can bring the Yeoman up on deck for a while
Forget laptops . batteries run down & liable to damage

 

[SteveSarabande]

Opencpn with a usb dongle and some free maps would be my choice.

 

[duncan99210]

We use Navonics on an iPad as a back up to the chart plotter. Cheap, accurate and also has a number of aerial photos for most anchorages and harbours. However, you do need to make sure the tablet you choose has gps fitted and Navonics is supported for it.
By the time you've bought a tablet, a case for it to protect it from the elements and made sure you have a way of keeping it charged, I think you'd find it cheaper to buy a proper plotter.
All of that said, if you have paper charts, don't mind transposing waypoints to a simple gps set and then I would stick with that. It's simple, you have to have paper charts anyhow and it gives great satisfaction, rather tha just playing a video game on the plotter.
One final thought, I've used OpenCPN on the laptop and found it a great tool for route planning and showing folks where we're going/have been. The demand for electrical power for a laptop does not make it a practical method of navigation on board a sailing boat though.

 

[jdc]

Seapro is good

I much prefer paper charts, and if they are available and affordable for where you sail then just buy them. That way you don't even need GPS.

However you asked about SeaPro Lite. It's very good (and their support is good also, the developers being in the UK). There are a few annoying little 'features' - like the scale bar doesn't work - but I have it and use it when I have to. When I have to is when the paper chart portfolio would be thousands of pounds (literally). I first bought it and used it in 2012 when we sailed down almost the entire length of Norway using the inside passages from the most northerly point to Kristiansund, getting on for 700 miles of intricate navigation.

We'd have needed to buy 100s of charts at ~£20 each, whereas for ~£200 all these and more plus all UK and Irish charts, plus the plotter program (SeaPro Lite) were available from Euronav. What we now do, if just planning to pass through an area, is buy the overview paper charts (at 1:200,000 maybe) which we know can be used to get into major ports via major channels should the plotter / PC fail, but use the plotter program to go into smaller places or channels.

We use Windows 7 not Vista, but I guess it works with Vista (that is to say, as well as anything does with Vista).

 

[nigelmercier]

SeaPro is excellent, almost perfect. The Lite version does all you need: http://www.euronav.co.uk/Products/Leisure/seaPro_Lite/seaPro_Lite.html
It is essentially free, you are paying for the dongle. You can also upgrade by paying the price difference.

I've got the Standard version, so can display my instruments as well.

If you remember to take the dongle home, you can run it there as well.

 

[Bertramdriver]

Opencpn with a usb dongle and some free maps would be my choice.

+1 why complicate things.
If all you need is a location and bearing then Opencpn is the answer. The software is free and the cost of a plug in gps dongle is peanuts. You can also use it for route planning away from the boat. A set of charts from an eBay supplier will set you back around £10
Although I have a reasonably sophisticated system I still sail with my laptop on running the charts and gps. To be sure to be sure.

 

[BrianH]

+1 why complicate things.
If all you need is a location and bearing then Opencpn is the answer. The software is free and the cost of a plug in gps dongle is peanuts. You can also use it for route planning away from the boat. A set of charts from an eBay supplier will set you back around £10
Although I have a reasonably sophisticated system I still sail with my laptop on running the charts and gps. To be sure to be sure.

Totally agree, it would be my choice too ... OpenCPN is classic and open source so it is quite free: http://opencpn.org/ocpn/

I once helped a friend deliver his yacht to Greece from NE Italy. He was something of a traditionalist and relied totally on paper charts. As I was used to a plotter (AND paper charts) I packed my small Acer netbook plus GPS USB adapter in my bag.

Our course south took us parallel to the Istrian coast but our skipper had no intentions of stopping in Croatia in order to avoid invoking all the costs of doing so, however, that first night off Pula near to the tip of Istria a hooley blew up on our nose, 44 knots of wind and lashing rain - visibility completely disappeared. The yacht had no spray-hood and the helmsman at the wheel was raked by stinging rain and sheeting spray from smashing into the steep wavefronts. We soon decided to seek shelter in an anchorage on the adjacent coastline.

It was a dark night and the dim light from our chosen entrance was invisible in the maelstrom. I was comfortably hunkered down sitting in the companionway reading out the course and distance to the narrow entrance to the skipper, from my netbook running OCPN on my lap; he was totally blind to any land features and happy to accept my directions. It would have been very difficult to have found that entrance using his traditional methods. Needless to say, his next boat purchase was a plotter ... despite my advice to invest in a spray-hood.

This is my USB receiver, circa $20 on e-bay :

 

[tudorsailor]

Cheapest option is to get a waterproof GPS receiver which will plug into the USB of your laptop. I have this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/GlobalSat-BU-353-WaterProof-Receiver-SiRF/dp/B000PKX2KA which works flawlessly and picks up signal from inside the saloon through the GRP. Much simpler than connecting the Garmin via a Serial to USB converter.

Then get OpenCPN and find yourself the appropriate charts and you are all set. Big question is whether your laptop will run out of juice before then end of your day out.

I also have an Android table with Navionics. Obviously more expensive if you do not own one to begin with. However a perfectly usuable plotter.

Do you have a smart phone?? A Samsung Galaxy Note should run Navionics perfectly as a handheld plotter with a screen a bit bigger than most phones. So good if you are getting long sighted.

TudorSailor

 

[tudorsailor]

Overcomplicated. Stick with paper charts. Use your 172 to create waypoints in the centre of compass roses. Pick the nearest rose waypoint. Then dead easy to plot bearing and distance to waypoint on the paper chart.

It's the Med. No tides, not much likelihood of rotten visibility.

True no tides. Hoever last time I was going to Gruissan in May in the afternoon, fog came down just as we were arriving. My plotter had packed in due to a faulty aerial so I picked my way up the channel guided by OpenCPN on the laptop. With just charts, I would have been really unhappy. If you can have a GPS plotter, why not?

Lovely place with some great restaurants in the little town

TS

 

[Bobc]

Overcomplicated. Stick with paper charts. Use your 172 to create waypoints in the centre of compass roses. Pick the nearest rose waypoint. Then dead easy to plot bearing and distance to waypoint on the paper chart.

It's the Med. No tides, not much likelihood of rotten visibility.

+1 to that. What you have is quite sufficient.

 

[westernman]

It's the Med. No tides.

Strictly speaking there are tides in the Med. But they are relatively hard to predict, surface currents dictated by winds tend to override tidal currents. So in the end nobody really bothers much trying to predict them or take them into account.