Paper Charts and Electronic Wonders

[Didereaux]

John,
Seems to me that yes, a Faraday box would be an excellent place to keep the backup in...shrinkwrap the whole thing to keep the salt air from rusting, corroding etc.

A well made cookie tin or breadbox would work, but not if it was made in India or such, the metal would not be good/iron-steel and so would not provide a good low resistance path, but sheet copper would do as well, contact fingers all along each edge to provide absolute electrical shielding these would need to be installed on any refabbed box as well. The whole thing working is contingent upon their being a continuos low resitance path completely surrounding the object to be shielded. As with most things, the underlying physica are a helluva lot more puzzling than the application of them! heh

For those unfamiliar with electrical shielding and/or Faraday boxes, the web is filled with it.

[Julian]

At the risk of offending most of the users of this group. I would like to point out that the GPS system is run by the US government, who, at their leisure may put back in some offset or disable it to the general public at will. Especially if the USA decides to pursue some other military action of if terrorists were to use the GPS system against it. For that I don't blame them, however, it won't help you in mid ocean. Given that, I'm not saying that I will not use GPS, in fact I do. It's a great tool. I've managed to use it to figure out the errors in my sextant as well as the difference in grid systems on charts and maps. Who would have thought that degrees from the Greenwich meridian would be different all over the world. Maybe some are metric and some imperial and some US imperial

Once we get going on our travels I will certainly carry a small handheld GPS unit and a good sextant and use both.

As for using a computer at sea, well my thoughts are that I will wrap it up and only use it in port, probably on land to stop it suffering from the salt air altering the pathways on the circuit boards. We can't afford to change our laptop every few years and since it's our photo lab and word processor as well as a way to look for jobs as we go it's important to us. However, given their delicate natural I will not use it as part of our navigation system, so I'm afraid it's paper charts for me. Not only that there is something magical and fun in spreading out a chart or map on the table in Starbucks and spending hours figuring out where to go. Nowhere more satisfying a place to do this is in a pub in England. For a good description read Bill Bryson's book, Notes From A Small Island.

Enough ranting from me. There is sunshine in Ontario today, best get outside and hang up the Christmas lights while we still can.

Julian

[Carter Brey]

Julian,

You needn't worry about giving offense. You said nothing exceptionable, and much that had plenty of common sense behind it.

I second your comments about the fun of spreading charts out for planning. It'ts over paper charts that I dream most and dream best. I don't have the time or resources to fly over to England for the purposes of route planning, but I do have a few Starbucks in the neighborhood, and I'll see if they enhance the chart experience. At the very least I'll be up one muffin and one espresso macchiato.

Carter

[s.v. LaVida]

I jumped on the electronic bandwagon as soon as it came down the trail.

What I find useful is the ability to quickly see where i am, especially during the night watch, without having to leave the helm.

I do keep paper charts onboard for my cruising area and wouldn't leave the dock without them.

Rit

[j2sailor]

Thanks again for the continued input.

I'm convinced that those on this forum have a firm grasp on the practice of good seamanship and forehandedness...J2