Two new beefs...

[DeeGee]

Beef No 1: Of all the bigger ripoffs, surely the standard charge for re-charging your liferaft inflator bottle £55 + VAT, has to be amongst the worst. I have just received the bill for my 4-man at over £250. (few seasick tablets, flares, batteries...).

Beef No 2: Has anyone come across passage planning s/w which doesn't assume your craft is amphibious? Neptune is wunderbar Solent to Cherbourg, but anywhere else, intervening coastline is ignored (how they calculate the tidal diamonds in Ashford, Kent, is beyond me !!



<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[Magic_Sailor]

Don't use that nasty, new fangled, Carlos Fandango software stuff at all. IMHO anything to do with software is crap. I've never found any (that is any at all) that isn't full of holes. And one of those holes could be a rock - if you see what I mean.

Use brain soft stuff to understand the passage better anyway.

Magic

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[DeeGee]

Hour-by-hour analysis of a chosen route, page by page through the tide tables, to determine the net effect of tide so as to get cts, is tedious, mechanical and ideal for a calculating engine. These bits of software are just that - the modern, at-home equivalent of a slide-rule. They should be able to do the job far better than you and I (optimising departure-time for instance) - and they do, as far as they go, but they do need help to stop them computing cog which take you over land (or as you say over a nasty rock or shallows).

I agree with you for navigation stuff, nothing like paper and pencil.. but for planning - I want good modern eqvs to the slides-rule.



<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[Twister_Ken]

I'm still in the steam age on this sort of stuff (and happy to stay there), but isn't the way to resolve this sort of nonsense not to ask the s/ware to navigate you from, say Eastbourne to Ramsgate which it sounds like it would try to do in a straight line; but from safe waypoint to safe waypoint which you have choosen with due respect to state of tide, expected weather, traffic zones, inside leg measurement, etc?

 

[johna]

Re: Beef 2

Unless you are using a very old version of Neptune there is a facility for making routes that allow you to go round headlands etc. Try Neptune for an update.

Johna

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[DeeGee]

Yes, exactly. But not 'navigate'.
These tidal calculators can save you an hour or so on a long crossing, but if you want to go from WPA to WPB, you may not want to go to an intermediate WP on some sticky-out headland, but you have to put one in if the calculator's ground track goes over the headland. Not really much of a problem, but you would have thought in this day and age...etc etc etc.

Don't get me wrong, I can do the tedious calcs, hour by hour turning the pages of the NPxxx, postulating my rough position and which tidal diamond to use... but this tediousness is multiplied when you try different leaving times, to see the best passage time - let a machine do it - quite a different proposition to letting a machine navigate!!

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[DeeGee]

Re: Beef 2

Yes, you can enter a WP in such a manner as to avoid the headland, but that is my point - such software should be able to do it automatically - how do I know that my WP is best positioned? it may be sub-optimal, and put time on the journey (in the sense of 'you tak the high road and I'll tak the low road...' ).

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[BrianJ]

I agree .. what is wrong with a bit of DR ?
Brian J

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[Twister_Ken]

Warning

If you want a s/w package to choose your waypoints for you, please make sure your liferaft and flares are in date.

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[johna]

Re: Beef 2

IMO one of the good points about Neptune is that you do have to consult your paper charts before fixing a route.

I agree with Twister_Ken check your liferaft or of course get radio control so that you can sit and home and sail your boat from port to port if you want everything done for you.

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[DeeGee]

Re: Beef 2

Hey, stop stamping on my toes Skip the skip-reading, and see what I wrote not what you read.

Since you obviously use Neptune yourself, your second nasty little para can equally apply to you.

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[DeeGee]

Re: Warning

I don't think you can justify nasty jabs like that, on the basis of what I posted. But then, I expect you will.

I was warned that this tends to be a cliquey place where nasty knives can be pulled out - thanks for confirming it.

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[Jacket]

Re: Warning

Sensitive little soul, aren't you? No-one was having a 'nasty jab' and you, just having a joke, tongue in cheek.

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[DeeGee]

Re: Warning

yes, I must be a sensitive little soul. but, as I understand it, I am not alone. I was warned that any contentious issue inevitably gets 'jokes, tongue in cheek' - aka nasty jabs. However, I came here for interesting discussion, and I don't mind an argument about being right or wrong - but the bullyboy put-downs leave me cold.

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[sailbadthesinner]

Re: come come ladies

okay no nasty jabs
but ken has a point
i would not trust a software package to download waypoints for me
i get the chart out, put em in the gps, stick them on my passage plan then read em out of the gps while someone else checks em against the chart

that is a personal thing based on
A I happen to enjoy the nav and passage planning
B If i hit a rock it is my fault and ask the coast guard nicely if they still rescue the fallible.

give us a chance we are a nice lot

<hr width=100% size=1><font color=red>I can't walk on water, but I do run on Guinness</font color=red>

 

[DeeGee]

Re: come come ladies

Well, part of the problem must be me. I have re-read what I said, but it doesn't seem misleading...
I never once suggested sw downloading waypoints. Waypoints are for GPS only, and for setting the target of the current leg. I do that with my Yeoman plotter.

This was all about planning - NOT navigation. The sort of thing you do at home with a G&T before a bigger trip.

The sort of thing I am on about is typified by a passage taking non-times-2 tides (ie. not Needles to Alderney) but more like Whitaker to Ijmuiden. Now that journey can take from about 26 to 28 hrs, depending on what time you leave. Neptune does a nice job of calculating the total tide effect, for each of the 24hrs in a day, so I can optimise the departure and plan to set off at 65* to make the 75* journey. That is not navigation, it is tedious calculation which I could also do myself, but hey, why bother?

My little beef was not a really strong beef, it was that I had just been explaining how it is used to my first mate, and the armchair example had us going overland! Of course I can add a WP off the land, to force the thing out to sea, but, as I said before - wouldn't it be nice if the s/w could do that too?

I think telling people to stay home, insinuate that they do not know anything about nav. or rely too much on s/w, from what I actually said, is unnecessary.

Someone once said on this board, 'argue with the message, but don't kill the messenger',. or something like that.

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[Twister_Ken]

Sorry for bruised toes

DeeGee, apologies if I trampled on your feet. I'm so used to people reading between and behind the lines on this board that I assume everyone does.

I have the misfortune to have been closely associated with IT since the early 80's. So I appreciate that software is not some wonderful 'product' that possesses reserves of knowledge and wisdom

It's actually a program written by a bloke (or a bunch of them) and as such is only as good as the programmer(s) concerned. And like the rest of us, he might have had a long night, a hangover, a car crash and a row with his girlfriend in the last 24 hours. So mistakes are made. Add in the fact that many programmers don't actually understand the relevance of what they are trying to get the machine to do (that's the sytem analyst's job) and I find the idea of placing life and limb in charge of a piece of software that hasn't been tested to the nth degree, doesn't have redundancy paths, etc fills me with foreboding. It's always worth wondering whether the people who wrote the navigation app have ever been on anything but a channel ferry and a rowing boat on the park pond.

If Microsoft or IBM or Adobe or Apple with their billions of dollars of resources launch major applications where the early adopters unwittingly become part of the quality control process, what hope does a small software house have?

So, although my tongue may well have been in my cheek (it usually is) you won't find me willing to endorse automatic routing software, especially when the paper and pencil method is so easy.

Again, sorry for any upset. I'm really a nice person. Well, sort of. Unless you're a politician or a lawyer.

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[sailbadthesinner]

Re: come come ladies

fine
now you fill in the background i see
occasionally we all jump to the wrong conclusion
I and probably Ken assumed this was you relying on this to do your nav. in which case i apologise for jumping to wrong conclusion.
sounds liken we have much in common
i often grab mrs s 2b to have look at my passage plan from my armchair nav.
she gives me one of those smiles i last saw from a nurse when i was in hospital.
on the good news i am allowed metal cutlery now

<hr width=100% size=1><font color=red>I can't walk on water, but I do run on Guinness</font color=red>

 

[johna]

Re: come come ladies

Apologies from me also if you think we came down hard on you but it really did come over as someone who wanted everything done for them.

Yes, I am a Neptune user and think it is the best thing since sliced bread for planning purposes. At £65 plus charts you really can't expect it to have detailed knowledge of every possible route you might like to take.

Johna

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[Twister_Ken]

Hi, me again

>Of course I can add a WP off the land, to force the thing out to sea, but, as I said before - wouldn't it be nice if the s/w could do that too?<

But to do this successfully, the s/ware needs to know things like - Your passage will round Portland. So will there be wind over tide overfalls when you get there? And if there are do you want to bust through them, or would you prefer to be five miles further offshore to miss it all, or do you want to run pilotage through the inshore passage. I'm happy to admit that Portland is about as extreme an example as you can get, but there are many other less extreme examples. An east coaster may be as a happy as Larry to be sailing in two metres of water, whereas a west coaster will feel nervous with less than 10 metres under the keel. Others will be relaxed about saiing within a few yards of the rocks, while some will want a couple of cables to spare. These shoud be skipper's decisions, not software's.

That's why I'd not trust auto-routing.

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