Laptop instead of charplotter & al.

[JPGaillard]

Dear all,

I am leaving for a solo circum. Not a massive budget as no sponsors and just doing it for myself. Have been looking at the charts, chart plotters and so forth.

My finding is that paper charts are easy and cheap to get and I may run with that, but I was wondering, given the prices of laptops if anyone has solely used his/her laptop in-lieu of a chartplotter/radar screen.

My boat has an old Raytheon radome and I am pretty sure I could work out a connection to some general interface to get it flowing info into the laptop. futhermore, the GPS and other stuff can also go to the laptop and I can get c-maps as well...

I was thus wondering if people have tried this and found it to work well or if it is a stupid idea and I am saving money somewhere where I shouldn't...

JP

[kd3pc]

With the laptop, you can all but guarantee a blue screen of death at THE most critical point of your trip. If you can deal with that, by all means go for it.

If you do decide to use the laptop, I would get going now, and learn as much as possible about the operation of the laptop (backlight, sleep, interfaces, etc), the charting application, the interfaces to other devices and those other devices. Now is the time to do that, not when you are out there and need to depend on this.

If I were to venture more than 5-10 miles off shore, I would certainly invest in an EPIRB/PLB as well as a backup gps, chartplotter and radio setup.

All the best on your voyage, I am envious.

dave

[sailingSammy]

Laptops with charts and nav programs are nice toys, they are especially good for sitting around the house dreaming of places you would like to go since you can look at the charts and imagine yourself being there. They are also pretty useful for planning a voyage as you can see which paper charts to buy and places to anchor and fish. For your situation it would be pretty much useless when you really need it.
If you are sailing at night in force 6 or 7 with heavy seas and pouring rain and you see a light in the distance but your not sure if it is a ship or a nav aid how long do you think the laptop is going to last in the cockpit? Even if you put it inside where you can see it what happens when it goes into screen saver mode? I speak from experience since once I have sailed on a boat that just had a laptop for navigation and it sucked, for the reasons listed above. Spend your money on a decent chartplotter, a few sailing charts, and charts or guide books of the places you want to visit
Of course if you have a pilothouse with inside steering then the laptop would probably be as good as a chartplotter.

[sailingdog]

I wouldn't recommend using or relying on a laptop as a chartplotter in a marine environment, especially on a smaller sailboat. Notebooks aren't terribly reliable in marine environments, and you really don't want such a crucial function on a notebook PC. While they can be very useful for planning purposes, paper charts are the way to go... and if you want electronic charts, a chartplotter might be a good addition, if you can afford it.

[SEMIJim]

As somebody who's been dealing with computers since before the PC was even a gleam in IBM's collective eye, I'll tell you this: I absolutely would not even consider relying on any laptop I could afford in a mission-critical role in a harsh environment. I especially would not rely on a typical consumer-grade Windows-powered machine in such a scenario.

I would like to have a laptop aboard for various reasons, but it going tango-uniform at some point wouldn't even amount to anything more than a minor inconvenience, much less a problem.

A laptop instead of real marine electronics? No way, no how.

Jim

[JimsCAL]

Even with a dedicated chartploter with electronic charts for the cruising area, I would still have a complete set of paper charts and one (or two) backup handheld GPS units.

[sailortjk1]

I use the lap top down below at the nav desk when on longer trips.
That way I can keep an eye on our progress on my off watch and don't have to go up to the helm.
I agree with the others and would not recommend relying soley on the lap top for navigating, but for me, I already had a dedicated plotter at the helm, we already have a home lap top, the electronic charts are very resaonably priced and easily optained; add a USB/GPS and I have a back up plotter down below where I can keep an eye on things.

[tweitz]

I agree with the other comments. I often bring the laptop with charts on a trip, but only to be used for planning when down below, and as a fourth backup, after the paper charts, printouts, and chartplotter.

[christmasisland]

Please consider that no on should rely on electronic navigation without a suitable and comparable backup. It isn't allowed in commercial shipping and although their budgets are much larger than ours we should use their safety standards as a baseline.

I use a Mac w/ macENC and free NOAA charts at home for planning - I'm terrified at the cost of replacement to bring it aboard in my little boat in my little sailing area ... I know I wouldn't be comfortable relying on it (or any other electronic device) on a solo circumnavigation.

Paper is expensive but reliable.

[billyruffn]

Somewhere between Costa Rica and Hawaii, I can't remember exactly where, I was sitting at the nav station looking at the PC-based charting software, when the low-battery alarm went off on the PC followed almost immediately by a PC shut down. Attempts to reboot were not successful. I spent days and lots of satphone and SSB/Ham radio minutes seeking advice on how to reboot the machine.

When the PC quit we lost: charts, email, weather fax. Charts were backed up with paper. Email wasn't essential as we had Ham radio to keep the folks at home up to date on our 'health and welfare'. Weather fax was replaced by spending a lot of money on the sat phone with a wx service (we were on the early edge of the Pac hurricane season and we were in the box, so I wanted someone "watching our six".)

When we got to Hawaii the geek squad said it was such a hard crash (probably from the power shortage) they couldn't even recover the data on the hard drive. I bought another hard drive and another PC as back up. (Eventually "presented" the new PC to my spouse as a "present").

Long and short of this story is ---- if you rely on a PC as your only source of navigation data, you need to sail no more than a few hundred miles of home.

Buy paper charts, and cruising guides and think of the PC charting software as a luxury you can do without.