Even with good charts and GPS, navigation can be a challenge because
sometimes things do not look as expected. This is most often true at
night because of the lack of reference points except for the nav
beacons. I have been in situations where my senses told me I was
headed in the wrong direction although my instruments said otherwise.
Likewise, knowing what one is seeing can also be helpful.
The same is true in daylight. For example, when we went thru "Don't
Rock" passage in the Abacoes, it simply did not look as expected from
viewing the chart and we passed on the wrong side of "Dont Rock" even
using GPS.
So, I suggest a cell phone or chart plotter app that displays what one
should see when looking in a particular direction. At night, it would
show lights in their correct positions when the display is held up in
that direction. Such info is already on the charts. Putting in
background shore lights might be problematic but in simplest form it
could be left out.
Likewise for daylight, one could see an image of nav beacons and
landforms based on chart info and on topographic info. This might be
linked to Google Earth ground images and corrected for lighting
conditions. One might even overlay the actual image seen by the phone
camera with the stored image for comparison and correction.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 06:58:09 -0800 (PST), Frogwatch
wrote:

So, I suggest a cell phone or chart plotter app that displays what one
should see when looking in a particular direction. At night, it would
show lights in their correct positions when the display is held up in
that direction. Such info is already on the charts. Putting in
background shore lights might be problematic but in simplest form it
could be left out.

Lights on shore are very problematic. They aren't usually charted and
are frequently brighter than the aids to navigation that you are
looking for. I have a very clear memory of going into a strange
harbor one night and frantically tring to identify a green light that
was plainly visible in the general direction of the channel. After
about a minute of trying to find it on the chart, the light suddenly
turned orange for a few seconds, and then turned to red.

Oooops.

On Sat, 15 Jan 2011 05:34:48 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 06:58:09 -0800 (PST), Frogwatch
wrote:

So, I suggest a cell phone or chart plotter app that displays what one
should see when looking in a particular direction. At night, it would
show lights in their correct positions when the display is held up in
that direction. Such info is already on the charts. Putting in
background shore lights might be problematic but in simplest form it
could be left out.

Lights on shore are very problematic. They aren't usually charted and
are frequently brighter than the aids to navigation that you are
looking for. I have a very clear memory of going into a strange
harbor one night and frantically tring to identify a green light that
was plainly visible in the general direction of the channel. After
about a minute of trying to find it on the chart, the light suddenly
turned orange for a few seconds, and then turned to red.

Oooops.

Hopefully, you didn't 'block the box'. That would have *really* ****ed off the
local commuters.