What is your primary means of navigation (poll)

[Boatyarddog]

Using Standard Horzion CP150 back up with CMap+Wide E chart, has lots of extra info tide stations, service marinas the ect.
Standard Horizon, VHF/AIS Radio
Main CP C80 Raymarine, RD 218 radar. For The Shipping Lanes in Fog!
Deep Zoom Tide and Current Website.
Paper charts, for Those Times when???

[jmschmidt]

The Mark 10 Eyeball of course. Let's hope everyone on the water does the same.

[Boatyarddog]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

The Mark 10 Eyeball of course. Let's hope everyone on the water does the same.

What do you use if the Mark 10 can't see a thing?
Boatyarddog

[wholybee]

Primarily OpenCPN on a laptop at the chart table. I also have a garmin handheld that I transfer routes created in OpenCPN to. I mount that handheld at the helm. All devices on board (tablets, phones) connect via wifi and use Navionics or OpenCPN.

[David B]

Originally Posted by Duxa

Hi all, Im just now getting into sailing and do not have a boat. I am however going to be chartering some boats through my Yacht Club. Since these arent my boats I am not sure about the state of their navigational equipment (from ability to function to age of maps). So I am looking into various portable solutions for navigation.

I understand that OpenCPN is extremely popular; however there are a lot of other options out there and I am curious what everyone is using. Please also mention what device you use to run the software on. And what region you mostly sail in (as charts good in one locale may not be as good in another).

This is a little spreadsheet I made for my own notes as I am researching these:

The survey only allowed one answer. The truth is I use the boats chart plotter running Navionics, and also use paper charts.

It's all there on the paper chart, so I plan on that, navigate on the plotter, and at hourly intervals or course change, I mark up the paper chart.

Proved the point re paper (despite the derision of a former crew member .....), when we lost position for nearly an hour off the coast of North Africa (blocking, interference - who knows, as it never happened again).
It was only when we were coming into the marina entrance that the position made sense again (from the Italian alps, to the African deserts, our position was being 'played with'). Paper and eyes saved the day, but when it works, the plotter makes life very easy.

[beetle]

I use Coastal Explorer with various official hydrographic office raster and ENC charts running on the nav station laptop. C-Map electronic cartography for specific areas.

Secondary system are B&G Zeus3 chart plotters running Navionics electronic cartography. I like having both C-Map and Navionics cartography available for comparison purposes.

On board are wide area paper charts and a sextant, watch, the nautical almanac, and sight reduction tables. Mid-ocean it is nice to verify that the GPS has my position about right

For navigating within areas of poor cartography (inside the atolls of the Tuamotus, for example) I use OpenCPN on the nav station laptop to work with satellite imagery stored as MBTiles and .KAP files.

- rob/beetle

[beetle]

Originally Posted by Boatyarddog

What do you use if the Mark 10 can't see a thing?
Boatyarddog

Radar.

[pcmm]

For me its Aquamaps on ipad for planning and general looking around (I used to have Navionics but I think Aquamaps is much better) At the helm I use the mounted Garmin chartplotter.

[Jorge M]

iSailor

[mroyal0413]

1. Navionics is primary source running on multiple tablets
2. Paper charts are back up
3. We have no chart plotter aboard
SV True Love - Catalina Morgan 440
Cruising Chesapeake, heading to Florida and Bahamas in November.

[ppollard]

We have a Simrad chart plotter that was on the boat when we bought it, but haven't used it this year because the mount is in the way of the companionway doors. SeaIQ has been great, except when the ipad overheats and shuts down! Otherwise we have plenty of charts which we keep handy. The huge advantage of these chart apps is that you can radically zoom in on a location.

[sv_pelagia]

"I have reached the conclusion that you cannot depend upon Navionics (or CMAP) charts to be "up-to-date" within a reasonable time. I find too many incidences of CHS chart updates (for new rocks, shallows, etc) that are not shown on Navionics, even several months later. In my view, relying solely/primarily on Navionics charts is not safe."

https://sailing-pelagia.blogspot.com...s-are.html?m=0

[David Mathis]

The survey has not allowed for the most common answer which is usually two or more of the options.
Being from the northeast and working during the cold months, paper charts are used while the snow is falling to plan the destinations and routes. When the landscape turns green, the information is transferred to the Garmin plotter.

[Hugh Burton]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Too bad you didn't set up the poll so multiple answers can be given. I think you'll find that most cruisers have at least two different nav tools. In my case, I have three on board (four or five if you include iPhone plotter software).

Ditto on multiple choices. Paper charts and Chart plotter and gasp a compass. We sail on Lake of the Woods a fresh water lake in NW Ontario with lots of islands and rocks.
This summer with lots of forest fire smoke, we sailed via compass bearing and dead reckoning island to island.
Chart plotters are inaccurate in that the paper charts were surveyed in the 1930s pre GPS. The buoys marking the channels/rocks aren’t exactly where the GPS says they are.

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by Hugh Burton

Ditto on multiple choices. Paper charts and Chart plotter and gasp a compass. We sail on Lake of the Woods a fresh water lake in NW Ontario with lots of islands and rocks.
This summer with lots of forest fire smoke, we sailed via compass bearing and dead reckoning island to island.
Chart plotters are inaccurate in that the paper charts were surveyed in the 1930s pre GPS. The buoys marking the channels/rocks aren’t exactly where the GPS says they are.

Hi, Duxa! I sail primarily in New England waters and rarely travel beyond 20-30 miles offshore or more than 7 days at a time. Also, I don't own the boats I sail, so I can't fit them out with the things that I might want. Some don't have chart plotters, and most of them don't have autopilot, for example.

So, humbly I state that perhaps my answer doesn't necessarily belong on this forum or help you much.

Then again, perhaps it does, since I'm sort of a version of you--I sail club boats I don't own--just a few decades down the road in terms of experience, nm sailed, and ports-of-call successfully found.

Paper charts, magnetic compass, depth sounder, and a clock all really come in handy. So do such aids as Eldridge, readings from weather buoys when we're within range of the coast but can't see it, and those U.S. Coast Guard local notices to mariners that no one reads anymore.

The navigation software I refer to sometimes is iSailGPS, which is so chintzy no one else mentioned it, but I like it because it uses the NOAA raster chart interface and the chart downloads are free. And, like others, it works on the phone's GPS even when you have no cell signal.

Though if you follow Requiem's suggestion to read the Boston light beacon change thread you'll see that I'm aware I'll need to adapt once the NOAA charts are gone.

By the way, I may have missed it, but did you say where you are or where you intend to sail? As is the case with Hugh, the previous poster, whom I've quoted above, that would have a bearing (no pun intended ) on what you'd use.

If you are always within sight of shore, then it's really hard to go wrong with charts, bearing compass, depth sounder, eyes, and a little instruction on how to combine them to figure out where you are. That clock will help you understand when you should be arriving at the next place. [When I was a kid sailing with my family in the middle of the Gulf of Maine before the advent of electronic aids to navigation, my dad also made us use the sextant, so I probably still know how to do that, though I rarely need it.]