Which Passage Planning Software?

boatmike

boatmike

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I already have a plotter which I use en-route.
I am primarily interested in PC based planning to give optimised departure times and tidal calculations for route planning before departure.
So far I have looked at Neptune C-Map Planner, Max-Sea and Sea-Pro. Neptune is so far looking the most cost effective at around £150. Anything else I should look at?
 
Reeds plus charts and pencil work out much cheaper!
And as I've been glad to discover, will do the job even when your electrics fail.
 
I'm happy with Neptune. I run it on a Vista PC and Windows XP Laptop. It does exactly what I need, plus it uses my C-Map charts as well. It will act as a chart plotter on the lap top, so that gives me a back-up if the main chart plotter goes down.
 
Thanks. As I live in a place WITH tides, and the lead in my pencil is not as sharp as it was once, that's the sort of fedback I wanted. Do you use the C-Map charts with a C-Map cartridge reader or on CD? And when you do do you find the tidal calculations accurate? The demo version seems to use Dover tide tables to calculate a crossing to Cherbourg which is weird, but I would have thought once a C-Map chart is loaded it would use the tidal stream atlas loaded in the C-Map cartridge. Do you find the calcs accurate?
 
A vote for Sea-Pro. I use it largely to determine optimal tidal strategy and passage planning. I have found it exceptionally easy to use for these purposes and without doubt I make faster passages because of the tidal planning features. I have networked it in to the Seatalk system but I don't use this functionality much as I'm well sorted with chartplotters and I like to input and check waypoint information manually as it's going in to the chartplotter.

People talk of lead, pencil and paper etc but these software applications are much easier and one can always revert to the almanac if the poo goes aerial.
 
Agreed re-pencil lead and I also think your usage philosophy is similar to my own. I did have Winchart Nexus but that has gone belly up and is no longer supported. Trouble with Seapro is only cost as I see it. Nexus appears to do all the same things for less money (unless you know different?)
 
i was lucky as I managed to avoid paying top-dollar for seapro. I bought it at SIBS 2007 and i recall it being about £130. I've since upgraded to the series III version which is better again. The price didn't seem prohibitive but then I'm in the software business so I can't chelp on about the cost of software too much!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks. As I live in a place WITH tides, and the lead in my pencil is not as sharp as it was once, that's the sort of fedback I wanted. Do you use the C-Map charts with a C-Map cartridge reader or on CD? And when you do do you find the tidal calculations accurate? The demo version seems to use Dover tide tables to calculate a crossing to Cherbourg which is weird, but I would have thought once a C-Map chart is loaded it would use the tidal stream atlas loaded in the C-Map cartridge. Do you find the calcs accurate?

[/ QUOTE ]

Neptune comes with a variety of options on tide areas and you manually select the one which fits in best with where you are planning a passage. For a Channel crossing the options are one tide chart covering the entire Channel, one covering just the central part or one covering the Western Approaches. The tidal streams are based on UKHO tide diamonds and once a plan is produced it will list which diamonds have been used and what the rate and direction was, tide data isn't taken from C-Map charts, only the charts themselves. There are lots of local detailed tide charts like Channel Islands or North Brittany coast or Solent etc and different ports are used as the time references. Dover is used I believe for the Channel or Central Channel, Plymouth for Western Channel, Portsmouth for the Solent, St Helier for the Channel Islands etc.

For the price Neptune is very good, especially if you already have a C-Map card reader and cartridges, but it doesn't do all the whizz bangs that bigger and very much more expensive programs do like overlay weather. The Vista C-Map version does have AIS now if you have a receiver and GPS linked. I find it very quick and easy for X-Channel planning and it usually agrees with my own or SWMBO's calculations for a plan. Where it is very informative is in the 'optimum departure' calculations which for example illustrate that there can be an hour or more's difference in a trip from Poole to Cherbourg or back between best and worst times. Yes you can do this with a pencil and paper but Neptune will give you 24 calculated results in detail in just a few seconds, let you pick which you want and then give you the CTS etc and show the COG predicted on the chart. The chart and the predicted track can be printed out. There is also a Passage Plan in a MS Word document and you can cut/paste optimums, CTS data etc into it. I've modified ours (easy) to be more relevant to our way of doing things and use it to print off a copy to keep on the chart table at sea because we don't use the laptop at sea only regular plotters.
 
I completely agree with what Robin has posted.

I use the C-Map card and reader. I have on occasions tested the passage times using published tide tables etc and done the calculations manually, and it's always come out in agreement with Neptune. Just once it disagreed, and I had forgotton to adjust for BST, but Neptune had calculated it.correctly
 
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