Which chartplotter?

Alpha22

Alpha22

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Sorry if this has been done 1000's times before.........

I'd like to buy a chart plotter, for a 27 foot cruiser. Used inland and coastal, North Norfolk area. Not looking to spend millions.....
I already have a VHF that will output AIS.... so hope that will feed in targets to the plotter.

I'm confused between the Raymarine offerings.....

What would be more suitable? An Element 7S or an Axiom 7 MFD.
I'm unlikely to ever need to expand with radar, side scanning sonar, cameras and all that jazz....

What are the benefits of an MFD v's a dedicated chartplotter?
 
I think in simple terms an MFD such as the Axiom provides a lot more functionality whereas the Element is described by Raymarine as a ‘navigation display’. If you don’t want to expand into anything else then the Element is probably quite a bit less money and will be perfectly adequate for your planned cruising (we did the same with a Broom Ocean 37 with a GPS and paper charts - no plotter).

I am thinking that an Element might be suitable for our flybridge - main helm station is in the wheelhouse and has the main kit and there is currently nothing up top and all we need is to know where we are when we helm outside so probably not worth splashing out on Axiom.
 
Alpha22 said:
Sorry if this has been done 1000's times before.........

I'd like to buy a chart plotter, for a 27 foot cruiser. Used inland and coastal, North Norfolk area. Not looking to spend millions.....
I already have a VHF that will output AIS.... so hope that will feed in targets to the plotter.

I'm confused between the Raymarine offerings.....

What would be more suitable? An Element 7S or an Axiom 7 MFD.
I'm unlikely to ever need to expand with radar, side scanning sonar, cameras and all that jazz....

What are the benefits of an MFD v's a dedicated chartplotter?
Click to expand...
Have you considered using a tablet? Particularly if you are using inland waterways too, with a tablet you can switch from charts to Ordnance Survey maps to Google Earth, etc. Far cheaper. I use two tablets (no additional cost for charts and maps on the second one) which gives me redundancy at sea, but allows me to have a chart on one and OS map on the other, for example. I also have a tides app and an anchor drag alarm app. You can also feed AIS data from your vhf into the tablets

www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
Last edited:
I've got the B&G Vulcan 7" which I'm please with and I see from their site that have a chart offer with them at the moment. They are MF and can act as a display for any other NMEW 2K data feed. Mine displays both the B&G networked wind and tri-ducer along with the Raymarine wheel pilot. But I only use it for the C-map charts tbh.

I replaced an old Raymarine setup with this mainly because the customer support from Navico/B&G is great. Raymarine do not have any customer support.
 
Do any MFDs these days take a PC input.
I know most take an RGB feed for cameras but generally, RGB isn't good enough as a PC input.
My Raymarine G Series screens aren't MFDs - they are dumb monitors that are fed from a black box nev system.
As a result, they take good PC inputs which is great for a ships PC.
It would be great if an MFD had a PC input.
 
Alpha22 said:
Sorry if this has been done 1000's times before.........

I'd like to buy a chart plotter, for a 27 foot cruiser. Used inland and coastal, North Norfolk area. Not looking to spend millions.....
I already have a VHF that will output AIS.... so hope that will feed in targets to the plotter.

I'm confused between the Raymarine offerings.....

What would be more suitable? An Element 7S or an Axiom 7 MFD.
I'm unlikely to ever need to expand with radar, side scanning sonar, cameras and all that jazz....

What are the benefits of an MFD v's a dedicated chartplotter?
Click to expand...

Depends if you want just location or chart/sonar and future radar capability.

Suspect there's very few new dedicated chartplotters out there these days (unless you run a PC and chart software or large tablet with Navionics App or similar). If you just need a chart then a large 10in + tablet with GPS and chart app works well these days.

Most big name chartplotters under £1000 these days are MFDs - they will do plotter and sonar minimum and over £600 usually radar too and be designed to get wet (unlike a tablet!). Plus AIS, engine, audio etc over NMEA2000.
Simrad GO series, Ray Element / basic Axiom, Lowrance Hook / Elite, Garmin Echomaps etc

Over a grand (for the smaller screens, pay an inordinate premium for the bigger screens) they will most likely do all 3 functions (better sonar) and have Ethernet networking and NMEA0183 etc so you can spread data from sensors (sonar, radar, autohelm, AIS etc) across multiple devices.
Simrad NSS, Lowrance HDS, Ray Axiom Pro etc

If you're inland / coastal and don't need your MFD to share data with another MFD device onboard then the non networked Axiom / Elements /Simrad GOs etc would be fine with a tablet backup for charts.

If your VHF is getting on a bit it might only output on NMEA0183 so bear that in mind when buying a plotter (if you want to display the AIS on the chart).
 
Lurker here, only usually read the post but this time a question.

I wondered whats the deal with using a tablet as a plotter? I have an ipad mini. Is it just a case of downloading an app and the charts are there offline?
Thanks for reading.
 
trevbouy said:
Lurker here, only usually read the post but this time a question.

I wondered whats the deal with using a tablet as a plotter? I have an ipad mini. Is it just a case of downloading an app and the charts are there offline?
Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...

Pretty much.
But you do need a tablet with a GPS sensor. Sounds obvious but some don't have it - my ipad is lacking GPS but you can buy ipads with GPS (3/4G version with the sim card i believe).
Most Android ones seem to have it now.

Other than that, yes download something like Garmin or Navionics App and off you go
 
I use and iPad too, brilliant,, huge screen , download the Navionics App from the App Store and away you go, !I paid £17.00 for the charts for the Med, and the benefit of having the iPad over the plotter you can take the iPad home and mess about with it. Ive downloaded all my routes to the iPad, and can't wait to use it in a couple of weeks time for real.The boat has a built in depth finder, so I'm good to go!
 
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