After many years of cruising from Maine to Grenada with paper charts
and our trusty handheld Magellan 5000DX, it's time to enter the
electronic age. While I do have a good nav station down below; having
access to data in cockpit, which at times can be wet, is of primary
importance. We still intend to cruise from Maine to the Bahamas, but
now we will be following the magenta line.

I'd like to hear some recommendations for either a cockpit chart
plotter, or a combo using my laptop below and some sort of handheld
above. Keeping in mind our cruising areas, and our limited fixed
income: If a chart plotter/GPS, which one? Or does a GPS attachment
to the laptop, some navigation software, and some sort of handheld
seems to make more sense? If so, what equipment, what software?

For you snowbirds with sailboats out there, what is your set up?

wrote:
After many years of cruising from Maine to Grenada with paper charts
and our trusty handheld Magellan 5000DX, it's time to enter the
electronic age. While I do have a good nav station down below; having
access to data in cockpit, which at times can be wet, is of primary
importance. We still intend to cruise from Maine to the Bahamas, but
now we will be following the magenta line.

I'd like to hear some recommendations for either a cockpit chart
plotter, or a combo using my laptop below and some sort of handheld
above. Keeping in mind our cruising areas, and our limited fixed
income: If a chart plotter/GPS, which one? Or does a GPS attachment
to the laptop, some navigation software, and some sort of handheld
seems to make more sense? If so, what equipment, what software?

For you snowbirds with sailboats out there, what is your set up?

Garmin handheld GPSMAP60CS, Bluecharts, Laptop with same setup down below,
USB-linked.


Dennis

See my post this group Copying Computer CD charts

If you want a land AND sea unit check Garmins 276C. Great gear on the
boat, plus gives turn by turn voice prompts for roadway navigation in
the car!


Capt. Spammy

On 21 Jan 2006 09:06:43 -0800, wrote:

After many years of cruising from Maine to Grenada with paper charts
and our trusty handheld Magellan 5000DX, it's time to enter the
electronic age. While I do have a good nav station down below; having
access to data in cockpit, which at times can be wet, is of primary
importance. We still intend to cruise from Maine to the Bahamas, but
now we will be following the magenta line.

I'd like to hear some recommendations for either a cockpit chart
plotter, or a combo using my laptop below and some sort of handheld
above. Keeping in mind our cruising areas, and our limited fixed
income: If a chart plotter/GPS, which one? Or does a GPS attachment
to the laptop, some navigation software, and some sort of handheld
seems to make more sense? If so, what equipment, what software?

For you snowbirds with sailboats out there, what is your set up?

We have the Cap'n Mosaic on the laptop in the nav center, 2 garmin gps,
fathometer, speedo, water temp smart transducer, simrad autopilot, furuno
radar all hooked together thru brookhouse multiplexer.

I am currently looking for screen for repeater in cockpit. May put in fixed
screen or may look into tablet with wired or wireless input.

Ideas are welcome.

Ansley Sawyer
SV Pacem

You might want to go the the Seven Seas Cruising Association web page
www.ssca.org and do a search on the discussion board. A bunch of folks
have recently had a long discussion on the advantages/disadvantages of
chart plotters vs laptops/software for navigation.
Only problem is the board seems to be non-functional for the last week
or so. It will be fixed soon hopefully.
Now that US charts are free it is probably cheaper to go with a
laptop/software and UPS GPS antenna IF you already own a decent laptop.
You might be able to set this up on a swinging platform so that you
can check it quickly if not exactly study it while at the helm.
I have a Garmin GPSMap 182 at my helm and I really like that. This
model is now out of date and you may be able to find one at a
reasonable price. The Garmin 2010 has a bigger screen and you can pick
up the monochrome version on eBay for $600. The only problem with
Garmin is that the charts can be expensive but I suspect they will be
giving US charts at low prices in the future.

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:29:24 -0500, "Ansley W. Sawyer"
wrote:

We have the Cap'n Mosaic on the laptop in the nav center, 2 garmin gps,
fathometer, speedo, water temp smart transducer, simrad autopilot, furuno
radar all hooked together thru brookhouse multiplexer.

I am currently looking for screen for repeater in cockpit. May put in fixed
screen or may look into tablet with wired or wireless input.

Ideas are welcome.

How about this one:

http://www.seapc.se/index.html


Capt Spammy

Ansley Sawyer
SV Pacem

Ansley W. Sawyer wrote:

We have the Cap'n Mosaic on the laptop in the nav center, 2 garmin gps,
fathometer, speedo, water temp smart transducer, simrad autopilot, furuno
radar all hooked together thru brookhouse multiplexer.

I am currently looking for screen for repeater in cockpit. May put in fixed
screen or may look into tablet with wired or wireless input.

Ideas are welcome.

The Panasonic Toughbook line is a line of laptops that is approaching
what you want to do at nearly normal laptop prices. I have not bought
one but the Toughbook line has some qualities in waterproofing and
daylight viewing that makes look to be pretty suitable for use in boats.

And they do it with some interesting features. For example, you can
have a good industrial strength Toughbook on the nav station
communicating with a wireless touchscreen display out in the cockpit.
Here's an example of a laptop that should work well on a boat:

http://www.feeneywireless.com/produc...hbook_73.shtml

And a companion wireless touch screen tablet display that could be used
on deck, in the cockpit, or at a secondary helm station:

http://www.feeneywireless.com/produc...ook_mdwd.shtml

There are two primary models of Toughbooks, they are the rugged models
and the semi-rugged models. Only the former have the waterproofing and
other features that really make them appear to be suitable for marine use.

And the model they call the Permanent Display Removable Computer or PDRC
is pretty interesting:

http://www.feeneywireless.com/produc...ook_pdrc.shtml

I've been looking at some of the Toughbook stuff on eBay and the prices
on the used and trailing edge models from the industrial arena look
pretty interesting.

I think the mobile computers that are suitable for use in marine
environments could become of viable alternative to dedicated chart
plotters. I'm not sure yet how viable they are now. A good chart
plotter is a great thing but a computer can do all that it does and more.

If someone wants to put me in a boat and let me go away for periods of
time to explore the viability I'm open to discussion on that. :)

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)

wrote in message
oups.com...
After many years of cruising from Maine to Grenada with paper charts
and our trusty handheld Magellan 5000DX, it's time to enter the
electronic age. While I do have a good nav station down below; having
access to data in cockpit, which at times can be wet, is of primary
importance. We still intend to cruise from Maine to the Bahamas, but
now we will be following the magenta line.

I'd like to hear some recommendations for either a cockpit chart
plotter, or a combo using my laptop below and some sort of handheld
above. Keeping in mind our cruising areas, and our limited fixed
income: If a chart plotter/GPS, which one? Or does a GPS attachment
to the laptop, some navigation software, and some sort of handheld
seems to make more sense? If so, what equipment, what software?

For you snowbirds with sailboats out there, what is your set up?


If you are not in a hurry, I would recommend waiting and watching the
current developments of two valuable technologies for pleasure boaters,
superimposing weather info and displaying the locations of other boats on
your GPS map. AIS and DSC are the new technologies for receiving position
reports of other boats in your vicinity on two VHF marine channels 87 & 88
(162.025 and 161.975 mHz) . XM satellite radio is one company that is
currently broadcasting weather info that some GPS receivers are able to
receive and display.

Here is one example of two Garmin units that receive and display XM
satellite weather data:
http://www.garmin.com/products/gpsmap376c/
http://www.garmin.com/products/sp2730/

www.tvnav.com has the Garmin 376c for $805

Here is more info on signing up for XM satellite weather.
http://www.xmradio.com/weather/av_subscription_pkg.pdf


The Garmin 376c doesn't have AIS vessel traffic reporting and display yet
but if you just can't wait you could try to get a third party AIS receiver
decoder that will put the waypoints into the Garmin 376c.

One such third party AIS receiver is he

http://www.nasamarine.com/AIS/AISENGINE.html

Here are some web pages that further describe AIS and DSC

http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/gmdss/dsc.htm
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/enav/ais/default.htm
http://www.sailmag.com/05feellison.qrk.pdf
http://www.amcom.nl/marine/icom_ic_m421.htm

If you want to use the sound card to decode and display AIS data on your
laptop see this web page:

http://www.coaa.co.uk/shipplotter.htm

"Ted" wrote...
wrote in message

I'd like to hear some recommendations for either a cockpit chart
plotter, or a combo using my laptop below and some sort of handheld
above. Keeping in mind our cruising areas, and our limited fixed
income: If a chart plotter/GPS, which one? Or does a GPS attachment
to the laptop, some navigation software, and some sort of handheld
seems to make more sense? If so, what equipment, what software?

For you snowbirds with sailboats out there, what is your set up?


If you are not in a hurry, I would recommend waiting and watching the
current developments of two valuable technologies for pleasure boaters,
superimposing weather info and displaying the locations of other boats on
your GPS map. AIS and DSC are the new technologies for receiving position
reports of other boats in your vicinity on two VHF marine channels 87 & 88
(162.025 and 161.975 mHz) . XM satellite radio is one company that is
currently broadcasting weather info that some GPS receivers are able to
receive and display.

Here is one example of two Garmin units that receive and display XM
satellite weather data:
http://www.garmin.com/products/gpsmap376c/
http://www.garmin.com/products/sp2730/

www.tvnav.com has the Garmin 376c for $805

Here is more info on signing up for XM satellite weather.
http://www.xmradio.com/weather/av_subscription_pkg.pdf


The Garmin 376c doesn't have AIS vessel traffic reporting and display yet
but if you just can't wait you could try to get a third party AIS receiver
decoder that will put the waypoints into the Garmin 376c.

One such third party AIS receiver is he

http://www.nasamarine.com/AIS/AISENGINE.html

Here are some web pages that further describe AIS and DSC

http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/gmdss/dsc.htm
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/enav/ais/default.htm
http://www.sailmag.com/05feellison.qrk.pdf
http://www.amcom.nl/marine/icom_ic_m421.htm

If you want to use the sound card to decode and display AIS data on your
laptop see this web page:

http://www.coaa.co.uk/shipplotter.htm

Here are a few more interesting links:

http://www.xmradio.com/weather/

http://www.nasamarine.com/press/pdfs/sx35.PDF
http://www.nasamarine.com/press/pdfs/sx35pract.PDF
http://www.nasamarine.com/press/press.html

"Ted" wrote in message
ink.net...

"Ted" wrote...
wrote in message

I'd like to hear some recommendations for either a cockpit chart
plotter, or a combo using my laptop below and some sort of handheld
above. Keeping in mind our cruising areas, and our limited fixed
income: If a chart plotter/GPS, which one? Or does a GPS attachment
to the laptop, some navigation software, and some sort of handheld
seems to make more sense? If so, what equipment, what software?

For you snowbirds with sailboats out there, what is your set up?


If you are not in a hurry, I would recommend waiting and watching the
current developments of two valuable technologies for pleasure boaters,
superimposing weather info and displaying the locations of other boats on
your GPS map. AIS and DSC are the new technologies for receiving
position reports of other boats in your vicinity on two VHF marine
channels 87 & 88 (162.025 and 161.975 mHz) . XM satellite radio is one
company that is currently broadcasting weather info that some GPS
receivers are able to receive and display.

Here is one example of two Garmin units that receive and display XM
satellite weather data:
http://www.garmin.com/products/gpsmap376c/
http://www.garmin.com/products/sp2730/

www.tvnav.com has the Garmin 376c for $805

Here is more info on signing up for XM satellite weather.
http://www.xmradio.com/weather/av_subscription_pkg.pdf


The Garmin 376c doesn't have AIS vessel traffic reporting and display yet
but if you just can't wait you could try to get a third party AIS
receiver decoder that will put the waypoints into the Garmin 376c.

One such third party AIS receiver is he

http://www.nasamarine.com/AIS/AISENGINE.html

Here are some web pages that further describe AIS and DSC

http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/gmdss/dsc.htm
http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/enav/ais/default.htm
http://www.sailmag.com/05feellison.qrk.pdf
http://www.amcom.nl/marine/icom_ic_m421.htm

If you want to use the sound card to decode and display AIS data on your
laptop see this web page:

http://www.coaa.co.uk/shipplotter.htm

Here are a few more interesting links:

http://www.xmradio.com/weather/

http://www.nasamarine.com/press/pdfs/sx35.PDF
http://www.nasamarine.com/press/pdfs/sx35pract.PDF
http://www.nasamarine.com/press/press.html


One small point of clarification:

Digital Selective Calling (DSC) is on marine VHF channel 70 (156.525 MHz)
Automatic Identification System (AIS) broadcasts are on two VHF marine
channels 87 (161.975 MHz) & channel 88 (162.025 MHz).