Routes copied from PC to plotter
provide flexibility and redundancy.

Let me describe a real-life system I helped put together for a friend a few years ago. As a boater Jack is experienced and adventurous, but rather the opposite with computers. Nonetheless, he owned a fast laptop and liked the familiarity of the paper-like charts that were then only available on PCs (North-star 961 expected). So we set up fiddles and a foam pad to secure the laptop near the helm of his 36-foot Downeast-style cruiser, and alongside it we installed a Garmin 162 mapping GPS with an external antenna and the simple but all-important computer data cable.

We then loaded two software packages, along with two flavors of electronic maps, onto the laptop. ChartView 3.0, notable for its solid display engine and ease of use, reads a variety of SoftChart, Maptech, and NDI raster charts thoroughly covering Jack's Nova Scotia-to-Chesapeake cruising ground. (ChartView, once part of the Nobeltec software stable, is no longer being developed but is still marketed by Weems and Plath). MapSource provides a way to move chunks of Garmin's inexpensive, low-resolution cartography – like U.S. Waterways – to the 162; the simple coast outlines and nav-aid information are quite suitable to the machine's 4.2 inch (diagonal ) gray-scale screen.

All this may sound complicated, but the result is powerful. Jack usually plans his cruises at home, supplementing all the data on his laptop with guide books and large-area paper charts spread around his den; hence he can carefully, and with mouse-click ease, build thorough and numerous routes. Once onboard, he uploads these routes to the Garmin, a critical step in the master plan, and off he goes. During harbor entrances and in other tricky areas, he focuses in the laptop with its full-chart detail, the little plotter LCD serving nicely as a zoomed-out second display. At slow speeds, he can still manage the keyboard and mouse. While the boat is on fast legs, the Garmin alone can provide sufficient nav data, given the prior route planning, and is also less distracting and easier to use while on a plane.

The system's redundancy is comforting. If the laptop goes down, Jack has his laptop and an old handheld GPS to drive it. In either case, he is quickly back in business with routes intact. And there's more. When and if software updates are available, Jack or his faithful service person (me) can easily install them on the laptop or, via the laptop, on the plotter. We were thus able to turn the 162 into a WAAS-accurate unit a year after the original installation. When and if Jack moves up to a flyingbridge cruiser, the laptop could continue to serve him well, connected with a longer data wire to a more fully featured plotter above.

For instance, last winter C-map introduced its clever PC planner. The product consists of rudimentary charting software, a blank user card, and a USB dual-card reader. Pop the blank into one slot and a regular C-map card in the other, and you're viewing your charts on the full glory of a PC monitor and making plans in the comfort of your nav station or home. It's easy to write routes to the user card, and many plotters are already able to read them (others may require upgrading). Garmin introduced a variation on this theme; its card reader/writer lets you use existing BlueChart cards with your PC or even create your own cards but does not yet support route transferals (of course, a direct wire connection works smoothly with Garmin's own plotters). Neither company's PC product is as powerful as most full-bore charting programs, but they do provide fast route making and- with computer and extra GPS aboard – able backup systems and thus are attractive add – ons for those skippers who focus most of their attention and budget on their plotters.

There are also new redundancy strategies available to those who favor PC navigation. One system that spins my beanie propeller is Maptech's Pocket Navigator combined with the Compaq iPaq PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) and Navman GPS sleeve. Sitting in its USB cradle next to an onboard PC system, and assuming some of Jack's route uploading discipline, it's easily ready to serve as a backup plotter if needed or spiffy shore-side exploration gizmo when wanted. Nobeltec is talking about similar PDA software that would work efficiently with its Passport charts, and Fugawi's charting software will work with Palm Pilots.

Meanwhile, signs abound that the big boys of marine electronics will fully incorporate PCs into their product lines sooner or later. About-to-be-released Ray Tech 4.1 will let C-Maps flow freely from PC to plotter, or vice versa, as routes already do over Raymarines's proprietary networks. The company is also planning to launch a marine computer dedicated to running RayTech at a high level or redundant integration with its regular hardware. Furuno, to my knowledge, does not yet have a competing product but could easily enable one (or more) by opening its NavNet code to existing marine PC hardware and software developers, as NavNet's underlying Ethernet communications is already an open standard. And, finally, I have seen the serious PC gear and Simrad has developed for its commercial fishing and oilfield customers and could scale down to yachts any day now. In short, while the "PC or plotter" question will eventually go away, it looks like I'll have plenty to tell you about in the process.

Originally published in Power and Motoryacht Magazine, copyright 2002 Ben Ellison. Used with the author's permission.

Ben Ellison has been a delivery captain and navigation instructor for nearly 30 years
and was recently editor of Reed's Nautical Almanacs.