What chartplotter?

Gin

Gin

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So, those of you have seen my two previous posts today will know I am contemplating the purchase of a chart plotter- I've no experience of such but I really liked my Yeoman Sport plotter as it was a great compromise as a stepping stone between paper charts and digital. However that has now gone as has Precision Navigation I seem to recall.

I envisage single-handed sailing but in a very modest way probably only venturing out into the estuary until I can be sure that my knackered shoulders and my stamina will bear up under the strain!

I have a suite of NASA instruments which I do not want to have to replace for a year or so and i have just made a quantum leap into a Navionics Android App and chartware which seems a pretty good deal. (I don't much care for smartphones as they seem tedious as far as battery life is concerned) but since I now have one I would like to use the same cartography on a plotter enabled for WiFi so that I can download the Navionics daily updates as necessary.

Therefore, without getting too techie with NMEA sentences and the like, which will just fly over my head while I nod sagely :), what do forumites suggest as an interim device which may turn out to be the bees knees and not needing anymore outlay?

Budget? Errrm under £300 which may indicate a secondhand unit
 
I replaced my Garmin 551 with a 751 this year but the 551 is a very capable unit and if you can get one second hand, it would be easily under £300. The other option is you may still be able to find a 451 (only a smaller screen) new for £299, and a quick search shows it available for around £250 (including full UK and Ireland charts). It's a full function plotter that has two NMEA 0183 ports, and also NMEA connectivity. My 551 was connected to AIS and all my instruments as well
 
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Gladys said:
I replaced my Garmin 551 with a 751 this year but the 551 is a very capable unit and if you can get one second hand, it would be easily under £300. The other option is you may still be able to find a 451 (only a smaller screen) new for £299, and a quick search shows it available for around £250 (including full UK and Ireland charts). It's a full function plotter that has two NMEA 0183 ports, and also NMEA connectivity. My 551 was connected to AIS and all my instruments as well
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I have gone down a very similar route. I had a Garmin 550 and now upgraded this year to an Echomap 70S to get the bigger 7" screen as I found the 5"screen a bit small, and the discontinued 70s was a good price. I'm not sure how I would have got on with the smaller 451. I have been very happy with the Garmin plotters and used the 550 as the primary navigation aid, using paper charts for planning and backup when I bought my current boat and brought it back from Falmouth to the Medway. I have no experience of Navionics, but there seems to be some quite disturbing recent posts about the accuracy of some of their charts.
 
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As you want to use Navionics cartography, you obviously can't use a Garmin chartplotter. You might consider a Lowrance Elite 5m, a 5" plotter with 480x480 definition, which you could find for around £300 new. This takes Navionics cards.
 
It's not within your budget but if you want to play with Raymarine kit, I have an e7 radar/plotter at Titchmarsh which you are welcome to see.
 
Re-Reading, you won't get a wifi enabled plotter for anything like the price you wish to spend, and the Lowrance mentioned above (like most other brands) doesn't include the charts.
 
johnalison said:
It's not within your budget but if you want to play with Raymarine kit, I have an e7 radar/plotter at Titchmarsh which you are welcome to see.
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I'm reasonably sure that Raymarine kit is the only one that lets you update the chart 'in situ' via the Navionics App rather than having to take the card out and plug into a computer.
 
Why not a second hand ipad 3 GPS with Navionics charts? All up less than £300 and you get a ten inch touch screen plotter that can do quite a lot more as well. Waterproof case about £50.
 
Colvic Watson said:
Why not a second hand ipad 3 GPS with Navionics charts? All up less than £300 and you get a ten inch touch screen plotter that can do quite a lot more as well. Waterproof case about £50.
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Being an inexperienced digital user I'm reluctant to mix iPad and Android, as it is already challenging enough but I thought that tablets etc were particularly difficult to view in bright sunlight?
 
Hadenough said:
Unfortunately not, none of them do.
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Gin said:
Oh, that's bad news, I was really hoping to be able to update from on board
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The man from Navionics disagrees, provided you have the latest generation of Raymarine plotters.

Can't say whether he was mistaken or not as I changed over to all B&G kit earlier this year.
 
Little Grebe said:
The man from Navionics disagrees, provided you have the latest generation of Raymarine plotters.

Can't say whether he was mistaken or not as I changed over to all B&G kit earlier this year.
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At SIBS yesterday the man from Navionics confirmed that no chart plotter can be updated via the Navionics app. The man from Raymarine was the one who sent me across to "complain" about the issue. The Navionics man was typically non committal about it. Fact is, if you have a chart plotter of any brand you need to buy the Navionics card and pay to have it updated periodically just the same as Cmap or whatever. I'd be delighted to be proved wrong :-) although I still won't buy Raymarine!
 
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Ah, perhaps slight cross purposes.

The SD card with the chart data on still needs to be bought separately from the app but the bloke who presented to us said that the SD card could be updated via the app rather having to plug it into a computer to do the update. Alternatively he could have been talking rubbish but he seemed quite certain of what he was saying!
 
Garmin built in charts can be copied to an SD card through the plotter, and that SD card can then be used with Homeport (free download) to passage plan, add waypoints etc, and update your chart. The SD card gets "stamped" by your plotter to become a valid route to do updates on both software and charts. It's actually very simple and very convenient.
 
Little Grebe said:
Probably not, but my current system will supposedly download software updates when connected to Wifi so being able to do the same with the chart chip would be nice.
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I have watched the debate with considerable interest but little real understanding of just how these matters interface- I was hoping that with a MiFi router on board I could simply update the navionics (+?) card in the plotter and that was that- seemingly not possible.

What I don't want to have to do, although may be obliged to do so, is to remove the card take it home, mislay it, lose it etc and then be well and truly stuck- this from a man who now needs 'looking for my glasses' glasses, and makes countless trips up and down stairs having forgotten why I went in the first place; not a happy situation at all, and that's not the half of it either :)
 
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