Navigation software options - not phone based.

[jerrypeters]

Hello sailors and thanks for your consideration of my question about navigation software. There are scores of threads in and around this topic. I have read them all and still have overarching questions.

Quick background … I have over 50,000 bluewater miles sailing experience, including a three-year circumnavigation. For most of those miles I used paper charts and GPS (along with radar, bearing compass, a sextant (which never got used), and a finger in the wind) to help me navigate and plan voyages. I eventually graduated to a chartplotter and then to laptop-based navigation software. For many years my software of choice was Fugawi with Navionics charts.

About ten years ago I decided to limit my sailing to a relatively small area in the Grenadines and quite happily relied on my chartplotter and my growing local knowledge to cruise what became very familiar grounds. Now I am going to venture further afield and am planning a 1–2-year slow circumnavigation of the Caribbean.

My question … what can replace Fugawi/Navionics for planning and backup. I want to use OpenCPN. I think it’s perfect - except I cannot find good charts for my intended cruising plans. I know about o–charts and they can provide about half of the coverage. CM93 charts are not sufficient and making my own is daunting. Navionics or C-Map can provide all but they’re not supported. So now what? Phone and tablet apps are possible but not appealing to me – too little function, too small screens, no keyboard - I know I’m a Cretan.

Nobeltec Time Zero and Rose Pointe Coastal Explorer look like options. But with their optional modules (is routing really optional?) and proprietary charts they are quite expense and of unknown quality. I may just have to live with Navionics on my phone, but I hope not.

Advice? Thanks much.

[BillKny]

Jerry,

It sounds like we are coming from this from similar backgrounds and desires. I am going to describe our system, and the rational behind it. It has worked for us for half a dozen years and 30,000 miles without issue. Most of our miles is open ocean, not coastal.

We have a 12 inch MFD with Navionics charts at the helm.

Our helm station is well protected from weather, and I do 99% of all my voyage planning and tracking from the helm station in the cockpit. We have no electronics permanently mounted below in the "nav station" because we just don't use them there. The extra information inputs from the chart plotter really help at the helm station to keep my situational awareness up in a complex situation. That is obviously going to be a function of boat layout, and personal preference but--for us--this arrangement works perfectly.

Our electronic backup is an iPad. (Actually two, we each have one) loaded with iSailor. Actually, calling these a "backup" is not completely accurate. In critical areas they are used constantly as a second source because the iSailor app presents me with TranSAS charts, which I much prefer to Navionics and especially to CMap. If they were available for my chartplotter I'd use them there in a minute. A 13 inch iPad give us as much display real estate as the chart plotter, and works well.

iSailor doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it is a solid, reliable and well thought out program. One of the things I actually like about it is that it is stable enough it doesn't need constant updates. I have been burned before when updating a critical application and having the update introduce bugs and problems, so I value long term stability over a constant ramp-up of "pretty" features.

I could go on for some time about the benefits of TranSAS charts over Navionics, but no mater what, I'd always want an easy to use, currently updated, "second opinion" on charting as I approached a new-to-me harbor. I think these days it is a mistake to ONLY use Navionics or Cmap or NOAA, or BA, or TranSAS for that mattter as your ONLY source of information. NONE of them are perfect, and none of them ever will be.

There are lots of reasons I don't think the iPad makes a good primary navigation tool. Since I do all my nav work in the cockpit, I need something that is 100% waterproof, is visible in direct sunlight, can be turned down dim enough to not bother night vision, can be seen and used even in full sun, and and will not overheat and shut down in full sun. The iPad fails on all these criteria. As for using a phone, I consider the tiny screen a useless tool for serious navigation and don't have a navigation app of any flavor installed.

The iPads are not used much at all offshore, except occasionally as screen mirrors below deck for the primary display in the helm. They are handy for that.

Of course, a full set of paper charts, tools, and the skills to use them are retained.. because Ship Happens.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by jerrypeters

So now what? Phone and tablet apps are possible but not appealing to me – too little function, too small screens, no keyboard - I know I’m a Cretan.

Nobeltec Time Zero and Rose Pointe Coastal Explorer look like options. But with their optional modules (is routing really optional?) and proprietary charts they are quite expense and of unknown quality. I may just have to live with Navionics on my phone, but I hope not.

I can tell you we use an old version of TimeZero on our ship's laptop, works very well for basic nav. I don't have radar or depth attached to it, though, so we use it more for planning and then back-up than for actual navigation on the bridge.

On the bridge, we have an installed MFD. Previous boat was Furuno NN3D (why we started with TZ, same engine), current one is Garmin. Radar, depth, etc.

I liked the Furuno better, and NOAA raster and vector charts/updates were free, useful for the areas they cover (which is the areas we navigate). Their options were expensive, but the C-Map vector charts are said to also include Explorer charts for the Bahamas, said to be a good thing.

The Garmin vector charts seem adequate, although that's with only limited experience so far... and I haven't looked to see what they have available outside US waters. OTOH, Garmin bought Navionics, so they probably have something decent...

Probably other brands OK, too.

We also use both AquaMap (primary) and iSailor (secondary) on Android tablets for back-up nav tools on the bridge. Cheap, in the grand scheme of things. I wouldn't be comfortable using only a tablet app, but they do OK on a 10" or larger screen. Even our smaller 8" screen is significantly better than a phone.

No keyboard is mostly a non-issue for us, partly because we don't find much cause to type anything in a nav app, partly because we've got the MFD and the ship's laptop.

-Chris