Plotting your way through the electronic maze

Practical: electronics

Choosing what kind of electronic navigational system to buy can be confusing, with a myriad of products on the market. Jon Neeves leads the way through the maze with this look at chartplotters and other options.

It was only 20 years ago and the GPS was in its infancy. The first leisure sets had just been made available and the prediction was that they would never catch on because they were too expensive. Hindsight is a marvellous thing. Visit any marina today and all the new yachts boast wheel-based chartplotters and these are waterproof, have daylight-viewable screens and are accurate to within a couple of metres. We have come a long way in 20 years.

However, the electronic charting revolution comes at a price —  money. Even a small 8” chartplotter capable of multi-tasking and displaying radar, fishfinder and pop-up windows will cost a minimum of $3,000 plus radar and transducers.

Local sailing

We tend to forget that there are alternatives to the chartplotter —  which for local sailing would be just as accurate. Recently introduced by Standard Communications/GME (and similar units are available from other suppliers) are what they describe as a “GPS Plotter,” (www.gme.net.au). It is a simple unit and does everything you need for local and occasional coastal sailing. Admittedly you will need to buy paper charts —  but you would be foolish to venture very far without paper charts anyway. The GME unit offers a modern, fast and much more accurate (+-7.5m now instead of maybe +-50m then) version of the original GPS. Virtually all the information you will find on a top-of-the-range chartplotter is available, except the chart.

All you need do is manually (pencil and ruler) transfer the position data to the paper chart. You can load waypoints, set up routes and follow the route on a small but very clear screen (with cross-track error displayed). It will even monitor battery performance. The unit has an anchor alarm, is waterproof, uses a minimum of power and is easily installed.

There will always be those who want the top of the range on display on their yacht — but infallibility is not a strong characteristic of marine gear and the GME unit would make a sensible standby. The GME unit has a further use and that is as a GPS feed for laptop navigation — another alternative to the chartplotter. Many people now have laptops and the prices of new laptops continues to fall, and their power (as computers) increases. Laptops tend to have big screens and are much cheaper to upgrade than the chartplotter.

Laptop downsides

The downsides to laptop chartplotting are they seldom have daylight-viewable screens, they are certainly not waterproof (or even splashproof) —  although you can buy “rugged” laptops ($5,000, www.steatite.co.uk) or try Clydebuilt Marine Electronics, www.cbme.co.uk —  and they can “crash” —  and personally they always seem to crash when they are most urgently needed.

You also need to consider how you are going to charge, or power, them because although their internals work on 12V their chargers usually output a voltage different to 12V. This is not a major problem and car chargers are easily available. They also typically use more power than a chartplotter, but you should be able to cruise most of the east coast of Australia by dead-reckoning, or intermittent use of the laptop, and it’s only entering and leaving anchorages where pilotage might benefit from electronic charting aids. To reduce the impact of the marine environment to your laptop you could transfer the image to a monitor, $200, keeping the laptop somewhere safe, secure and dry.

One of the developing problems of marine electronics is the growth in the versatility of the equipment. This is resulting in perfectly serviceable equipment that is simply incompatible with the new devices — the Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a prime example. Using your laptop, which you probably upgrade with a frequency you would never consider for your marine equipment, caters for the new developments —  although you will obviously need to upgrade the software (though to add AIS to the Fugawi chartplotting software is a nominal cost). There is nothing new on the horizon? —  leisure AIS has gone from a simple Class A receiver, to a Class A and B receiver and then Class A and B transceiver in maybe three years and the AIS Search And Rescue Transmitter (AIS SART) is the next phase. (AIS will be covered in more detail in a future article on Coastal Communications in CH.)

Electronic charts

The two main suppliers of electronic charts, C-MAP and Navionics, both supply charts in a form that can be loaded to a laptop, and costs are similar or identical to the costs of the charts for a chartplotter. You might need to buy charting software (Fugawi seem to be market leaders, www.fugawi.com) but this might come from your chart supplier as a package. Fugawi offer a free trial download of charts and charting software for a couple of weeks.

Advantageously some laptop charting allows overlays of the charts with GRIB files, Google earth images and AIS data etc. Given that you already have the laptop your investment for the software charts and, say the GME unit (and you could always simply buy a cheaper GPS aerial —  although this does not provide any display), is much less at around $1,000 than that dedicated, but waterproof, 6.5” unit, which will never play the latest DVDs. Oceantalk supply standalone GPS aerials and act as distributors for Fugawi, www.oceantalk.com.au

It would be easy to think the only choice left is to look at chartplotters themselves, but there is yet another option. If you are one of those who uses their mobile only as a telephone then, having watched the rest of the population, you will not be surprised to learn that some mobile phones have a GPS function and can accept full Navionic charts (and downloading the charts, for example, for Australia, costs a pittance – less than $20!). It would be difficult to suggest that a mobile could replace the functions of a decent screen chartplotter, laptop or GME GPS plotter but the technology is available. You can interface with your laptop with lots of obvious functions, and your mobile phone is certainly more portable than a laptop if you want to explore in the dinghy. Many use handheld, pocket, GPS on watch — using the mobile phone in a waterproof case is no different.

Locating the unit

Chartplotters themselves pose a host of compromises, apart for their cost. Where will you locate the unit? The obvious place is the chart table because this is where you fill out the log and do your pre-passage chart work – and this location is comfortable. With the advent of weatherproof chartplotters many have discovered the advantage of having the unit at the wheel, because it is in pilotage work that the chartplotter can shine (especially at night when entering a strange anchorage). But pre-passage chartwork at the wheel in the rain with the sandflies? Moreover, most serious passagemakers have autopilots and watchkeepers really need not approach the wheel (where it might be wet, windy and cold) except to access the positional data contained on the chartplotter. Consequently you need two units —  or accept the compromise.

The second set of compromises is the host of data that is now available that can be displayed on the multifunction chartplotter: charts, radar, weather and AIS. We are in danger of losing sight of the fact we wanted to go sailing to “get away from it all,” and we have replaced a complicated life common to all on land to something similar on water, but imposed by ourselves, and limited only by the depths of our wallets.

At the extreme one might want radar, AIS and the charts simultaneously (say entering Moreton Bay from the northeast in thunderstorm weather). That is a lot of information to display —  when you might be better simply looking over the bow.

Players in the market

The default choice for marine electronics is Raymarine, and all credit to them —  they led the way for years —  www.raymarine.com.au There are more suppliers now, including Garmin — www.garmin.com, the Navico family — www.navico.com —  and most recently Plastimo with their Advansea range (although these are not yet available in Australia). There are others but they tend not to offer the same breadth of a portfolio.

Basically all the marine electronic companies offer the same basic portfolio: chartplotters (often now with integral GPS aerials), usually with colour screens, waterproof (so they can be located at the helm) that interface with some or all of the other electronic equipment you might have and with a range of screen sizes from 5” to 19”.

Commonly screens can be split, so you can see a fishfinder image alongside the chart and sometimes the radar, and AIS etc, images can be overlaid on the chart. The greater the number of screen functions and the larger the screen the higher the cost, a “basic” (it’s actually pretty sophisticated) Raymarine 5” A series chartplotter (it includes the GPS aerial) costs $1,675, and their top-of-the-range 19’ G Series $17,000+ and that’s without any transducers.

Compatibility

Most people will want to install compatible equipment, even if only so they look “matched,” and there are still problems of interfacing between different suppliers so the choice of your chartplotter might be determined by the total package you want to install. Buying from one supplier should allow all the equipment to “plug and play”. At the least most owners, in addition to the chartplotter, will want sailing instrumentation, speed, depth, wind and an autopilot. Options might include, radar, AIS and a fishfinder/sonar and if you think you might want, say, radar, later you might need to buy a more expensive multifunction chartplotter now (or face having to buy another screen later).

Excluding B&G, Raymarine still offer the best choice of sailing instrumentation and transducers (particularly wind) with cheap and cheerful and more complex models and have a very well established reputation for their wide range of autopilots. Navico can offer most of the range, though not necessarily the huge range of choices, available from Raymarine but Garmin does not (yet?) have an AIS transceiver, yacht autopilot nor that depth of range of sailing instrumentation available from Raymarine. To balance Raymarine’s strength in the breadth of its portfolio Garmin must be one of the biggest and longest established names in GPS technology having been in the field, along with Furuno, since its inception and Navico are certainly pushing the technology (in another area) with their broadband radar.  

Garmin offers a range of chartplotters, some “normal” with buttons, some touch screen. An advantage of touch screen is that the size of the unit is basically the size of the screen and if you are pushed for space then these units are very effective. The touch-screen menus are very intuitive. Disadvantageously, touch screens do not work with gloved fingers but you can buy a remote. Garmin do not use Navionics or C-MAP but have chosen to go their own way and this allows them to buy their charts from whoever they think are the best for that part of the world. Garmin also produce  a 5.2” hybrid, marine and car, navigator which has obvious advantages. Garmin’s range also produces plotters that are long rather then wide, useful if you commonly travel N-S (Australia’s east coast) rather than E-W, although if you use one of the more conventional wide-screen plotters in split-screen mode you get “long” screens anyway.

The breadth of Raymarine’s plotters is vast, and there are four different ranges: A, C, E, and G. As you move up the alphabet the sophistication and range of screen sizes increases. Basically they have a chartplotter for everyone. Raymarine use Navionics charts. The A series entry-level plotters (but even at entry level they can accept AIS, and interface the autopilot via Seatalk) have built-in GPS and the unit can be removed from its bracket (for security) which suggests that with extra brackets you can move it around the boat, though you might need a GPS feed if you want it at the chart table. At the other end of the scale, the G series is controlled from a wired or remote keyboard – and do everything! The C and E Series both will display charts, radar, sonar, AIS but the E Series goes further, offering engine monitoring and video.

Navico offer the same ranges as Raymarine and Garmin, basic and more sophisticated but within their family they use C-MAP for some, for example Simrad and Northstar, and Navionics for others, Lowrance and given that any plotter is pretty useless without the charts there is considerable argument in choosing the plotter based on the charts that suit you. Their screen displays are reported to be exceptional and if you are considering radar then their new broadband system merits serious consideration (though if it’s a winner expect other manufacturers to introduce their own systems). Navico also offer both touchscreen and keyed plotters and touchscreens are proving very successful for both Garmin and Northstar.

Networking

All the manufacturers are extolling the virtues of networking their systems; buy everything from one supplier and they will all interface with one another. On this basis there is no need to employ the services of a marine electrician to wire the system together – they are either plug and play, which is what the advertising suggests, or not. Much of the cost of installation is feeding cables through conduits and you do not need to pay a marine electrician to do that. Some suppliers provide very detailed installation instructions, cable sizes etc – provided you can read and assimilate and are willing to clarify anything with the supplier’s technical department. It’s a good idea to check how easy it is to contact them before buying, because some do have large telephone queues. You can make major savings by conducting your own installation.

The more you pay the better the system, but there are no real standouts. However, given that a wheel-based plotter is right in front of your eyes you hardly need a big screen for pilotage work, bigger is nice but bigger (in the same range) does not offer any extra features. You would be better using the extra money to buy a better model than a bigger simpler one and 8”-10’ screens are generally more than ample.

WHAT WE’D DO ON JOSEPHELINE

If we, on our Lightwave 35 catamaran Josepheline, were starting afresh with a clean slate? Based on our current understanding of the market —  we would buy a standalone GPS, like the GME Plotter — this would provide all the base load of data anyone needs and would be our fall back if everything else fell over. We would buy the paper charts for the areas in which we are going to cruise.

Josephine and I both have laptops, not very modern, and we have an even older laptop (that still works but takes hours to boot up). We would use these for navigation at the chart table (having three should cover the fallibility of the laptop), so we would buy charting software and charts and wire up to feed from a simple GPS aerial, maybe the GME unit. The laptops would be set up to receive the charting data, AIS and whatever overlays the internet (wireless broadband – Telstra’s Next G) might be able to provide, GRIB files, Google Earth. Given that we already have laptops (and will continue to have laptops) they are not a “boat” cost. Our investment would be less than $1,000.

We do value chart and radar information at the helm, though have comfortably lived without them, and we would look to buy the cheapest display(s) possible (or postpone their purchase if funds were short).

I personally like to programme the autopilot to the next waypoint so I’m not interested in expensive interfacing – in fact interdependence can be dangerous as when one unit “falls over” you might lose everything. We are not keen on running down to the chart table to check pilotage and a helm screen is a godsend. At the helm, because it is so close, a small screen, say 8”, should be adequate (and 10” more than enough) — it  only to be used for pilotage, but having the ability to display all and anything, chart, radar and AIS, is obviously advantageous. A colour 8” multifunction screen chartplotter can cost of the order of $3,000 – but would need its own GPS (although many are built-in). Larger screens are obviously easier to read (and really expensive) and make use of split screen and inset window functions easier but they, despite night mode can impact vision, and provide an overload of information.

Our system is still expensive, at $4,000, and oddly the, less than, $1,000 arguably is the money better spent. However, we do finish with two standalone systems, even if one goes down the other provides almost identical data.


Jon Neeves
Jon and wife Jo raced in club and bluewater classics in a 10m lightweight monohull but have now opted for more laidback sailing and have been regularly cruising their Lightwave 35 Josepheline for the past five years.