Chart Plotters

[Peter Cockerton]

Looking for views from others on how useable are chart plotters on open day boats like the Bayraider. My chartwork and piloting experince to date has been wuth the luxury of chart tables and yeomen plotters with gps support. Next year i want to gain more coastal experince with my bayraider and i'm deliberating on how best to equip the boat for daytime navigation. Using paper charts and standard plotting will always need to be done as backup at the very least but i'm wondering how useable are the budget 5" plotters when single handed and the sea state gets up a bit making viweing and scrolling around the menus difficult. Power consumption is also an issue but i have in mind to install an 80 a/h in a box in front of the centreboard just for that purpose. I know some of you have installed fishfinders but  i don't know wheteher thats for fishing and depth useage or infact if you have a combined plotter/fishfinder which you use for navigation should visibility suddenly drop and you can't use the mark 1 eyeball.

[David Whyte]

Hi Peter

I was wondering if you had found out any more details about chart plotters for Bayraiders. I took delivery of a Bayraider last week and am planning a multi week trip through the Whitsunday Islands next year. I have no real navigation experience as most of my trips to date have been in a sea kayak. My plan was to cut the relevant charts to A3 and laminate and use a marking pen for plotting standard 3 bearing fixes with a plain GPS readout of lat/long as a check on my sighting skills. If there is a smallish chart plotter around suitable for a Bayraider I would be interested in the model.

Regards
David
Australia

[Craic]

Hi David,
I can recommend the Eagle Cuda 350 S Map, http://www.eaglenav.com/Products/Fishfinders/CUDA-350-SMap/ .
Has echosounder, is small, uses very little electricity, robust, and well readable in sunlight. Has a rudimentary worldwide map installed which show the major islands and coastlines with tolerable accuracy. Inexpensive.

I have the Garmin GPSmap 620 on another boat, but that lacks an echosounder and uses a lot of electricity. Upside is it takes regular navigation charts, though I feel I use those very little. Expensive.

[Tony]

Hi, Peter.
Much of my sailing is done on a reservoir so  “navigation”  doesn’t really come into it, however, I rarely sail without my old Garmin76 - switched on to give me an indication of boat speed for sail trimming etc. - and, when looking at the saved tracks afterwards, to wring my hands over the tacking angles! Its a grey scale screen so it runs for ever on a couple of AA cells.
 When sailing somewhere on the coast or abroad I always have charts (waterproof, if possible, on a clip board) maybe an Ordinance Survey map of the area, hand bearing compass and binoculars. Foolish not to!  If planning a coastal passage I put waypoint into the Garmin and have details such as tide times, bearings, distances to run, etc on a piece of white board fixed in plain sight.  If visibility, or anything else, looks like it might be a problem I simply don’t sail!
I have a depth/fish finder (because I love gadgets!)  but knowing the depth under your keel is only useful to navigation if you have a good chart, I imagine.

A full blown GPS chart plotter with zoomable charts and all the bells and whistles would be fun – if it could be fixed somewhere close enough to the helmsman to actually use it - but I rather think it would be of limited value. If caught out in nasty conditions as you suggest, you might be too busy to peer at a rain splashed 5” screen!  On the other hand, while at Milford Haven this year, on our way to Pembroke Pool, and not sure where to turn, I happened to have my Nuvi 360 car sat nav in the pocket of my day sack, swiched it on under the spray hood and in a few seconds I had my Latitude and Longitude, ready to put into the Garmin 76 .  This wasn’t needed as scrolling around in the map view, although hardly intended for navigation, gave me enough detail  to work out where I was on the Imray chart. It was so useful in this role that I might buy it a waterproof pouch of its own. It has a data base of pubs and restaurants, too, which you don’t often get on a marine chart plotter!  Garmin used to make a car sat nav (with turn by turn voice guidance) that would also take marine Blue Charts on an SD card. I haven’t seen it advertised for some time, though. I think it has been replaced by the GPSMAP 620 which costs about £600, which is, at least, waterproof.

[Julian Swindell]

Sigh... "a multi-week trip through the Whitsunday Islands" I'm hoping I might get as far as Weymouth next year if the weather is OK. I think we need a detailed account of this journey. I am green with envy.

[David Whyte]

Yes the Whitsundays are a great spot to sail and should be ideally suited to a BR. The outer reef takes away the majority of the swell and there are some lovely beaches to land on though the tide can go out a long way. There is some nice snorkeling spots and I plan on taking a tent and camping on the beach which costs a whole $4 a night. There are a couple of areas on the trip where I have to watch out for large biting creatures.  Although the Whitsundays are in Australia itsstill about 1700Km from my back door to where I launch the boat and then I have to drive the empty trailer North several hundred Km to where I will finish so unfortunately I can’t go there too often. I have done trip before in a sea kayak but planning on getting the wind to do more work in my retirement years

Cheers
David
"Little Ripple"
Lake Macquarie

[Peter Cockerton]

David

Still researching options on the chart plotter, great comments so far from Claus and Tony this forum is wonderfull for getting advice from more experienced sailors and swallow boat owners.

Looking at Standard Horizon CP300i at the moment and playing with the Navionics plotter software on my iphone, if you have the phone the app is wonderfull value at less than £30.00 and you get free updates.

The one thing that keeps nagging me is i know i will use the plotter as the main navigation tool and the physical chart as a standy with minimal markings on it. Then when you get caught out with a squal the plotter will be impossible to see and use with the expected consequences. A plotter on an arm would be nice to allow it to be raised to hand height whilst helming at the same time, any clever ideas anyone.

Your Whitsundays trip sounds great and with your new Bayraider you will be in safe hands.

A number of extremely useful modifications/personilsations call them what you will for the Bayraider are within this forum so well worth a read.

I took delivery of my Bayraider earlier this year and i'm very pleased that i can sail her single handed, confidently and feel safe that she will take gusts in her stride.

Enjoy

Peter

[Jeff Curtis]

I use a Garmin GPSmap 298. It had been superceded when I bought it so I got a good discount. It has a colour screen and came pre-loaded with UK and N Europe charts. It does all the usual chart plotter stuff including speed over the ground, depth, time, tides, fish finder, photos of some ports, MOB, boat track and tacking angles, waypoints and course to steer, and of course charts. It draws a max of 14 watts which is about 1 amp at 12 volts but I find that a sealed 7 amp/hr alarm battery lasts all day, especially if you turn the screen brightness down. I always carry at least one spare as they are not expensive. The cable connector was not completely water proof so I sealed it with self-amalgamating tape. I have the battery mounted in the usual place, on the front of the centreboard case. The transducer is mounted at the front of the centreplate slot but I had to open this out and extend it a tad for it to fit. The screen is only 10 x 8 cm but it is bright and fairly easy to read as long as you are not wearing polaroid sunglasses. It has gone wrong once taking an age to lock on to satellites. Garmin responded immediately to my query and sent me a software update card which fixed the problem. Hope this helps.

Jeff