Electronic Navigation

[Tom Keevil]

The thread "Chart Plotter and Radar Update Choice" by wsonntag was explicitly started to avoid hijacking another thread. I'm afraid that he, in turn, has been hijacked, so I thought I'd start a new one.

In our experience, the use of a chart plotter completely changes the nature of our sailing experience. We are not Luddites. For 16 years our piloting/navigation tools included paper charts, a handheld GPS that provided Lat/Long, a radar, binoculars, hand bearing compass and a depth sounder. With this kit we made overnight ocean passages, and traveled thousands of miles in the very challenging cruising grounds of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska.

Last summer we made a two month trip to Northern BC, and added an iPad with Navionics to our list of equipment. This made a huge change in the nature of the journey. The pleasure of a cruise is comprised of many different elements including managing the boat and the sails to move the boat efficiently in a given direction, the joy of moving along in the absence of an engine, the pleasure in visiting previously unknown spots and well known favorites, the satisfaction of safely meeting the various challenges of tides, currents, limited visibility and unmarked hazards, and the pleasure of solving these problems together as a team.

Here is an example of a piloting challenge. Note there are no aids to navigation. Also note that it is 25 or 30 miles from the nearest settlement, and we had seen half a dozen boats total all day, so there was not a lot of available help if things went wrong. Also note that all of the green bits are rocks, not mud.

Stopper Group.jpg

We traversed this at mid tide, north to south in 2015 without the electronic chart. It was a very tense experience, and required our full concentration, but we made it through successfully. There were many situations like this on the trip, and we ended it with a feeling of immense satisfaction. We returned to this area last summer with Navionics. Once again we made the entire trip without hitting any rocks and without getting lost. The trip was much more relaxing, we didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure things out, though we did continue to pay careful attention to the real world around us, and in the end we didn't feel that we had really accomplished anything special. We had played a rather simple video game, and won.

There's a lot to be said for taking the tension and uncertainty out of a cruise, but there is also a major loss when the challenges are gone. If your goal is to make the safest possible journey, electronic charts are a great tool. They don't, however, make for a better experience.