Paper Charts or Just Electronic

[Simi 60]

My main seiwa chart plotter uses GPS only and it drops out occasionally, even with a new aerial.

Opencpn uses a $12 USP puck that picks up GPS and more and it never drops out.

My android tablets using navionics pick up GPS and more and they never drop out

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by CassidyNZ

How small (say as a %) and by whose estimate? You’re talking about 20 or more satellites going feral simultaneously. Really?



Is it fair to say that there is a better chance of Donald Trump pushing the nuke button than GPS going belly-up?



Whatever the case, it’s really not something sailors should spend time worrying about. I know I don’t.

Pushing the Nuke button would probably guarantee all the satellite systems going down.
Impact by a Coronal Mass Ejection would likely damage or destroy most of the constellations.
Any major war would likely see all the constellations shot down by one side or the other. And the leftover debris would prevent launching new constellations for decades to come.

So we can deduce that the odds of global sat nav failure are non-zero and are more likely that the Nuke button being pushed.

I’m happy to hear your opinions about what I should and shouldn’t worry about. It makes me feel so much more secure that I can write off that one worry for ever and ever just cuz you said so.

How about my boat sinking? I probably shouldn’t worry about that either. No need to carry a liferaft.

How about a heart attack. It’s more likely that someone on my boat will have a heart attack than the boat sinking. Maybe I should carry an AED. How about treatment drugs for after the AED does its thing?

[CassidyNZ]

Cmon Adeline, this argument is getting old. Do you seriously worry about the GPS constellation falling out of the sky? Your boat sinking, you or someone on your boat suffering a heart attack are real possibilities. You should and probably do plan for those.

But failure of the GPS system that you appear to worry about has got to be in the realm of several decimal places of one %

One way or another I’m over this discussion.

[transmitterdan]

The threats to GPS are mainly localized jamming such as happens around Norway, Persian gulf, Black Sea, Korea, etc. These jamming threats affect all satellite based systems so having GLONAS or Galileo receivers is of no benefit against that. Having multiple receivers on board is of no benefit against jamming either. If you plan to venture into known GNSS jamming regions plan accordingly. For the rest of us GPS system failure is a non-issue.

If/when GPS experiences a long term global failure you will have 200 other things to worry about before you give a hoot as to your position within a meter. You won’t even know where you should go for safe harbor. You will probably be better off figuring out how to survive at sea for a really long time. Land will be the last place you want to be where millions of starving people will be in complete chaos. Mobile phones, power plants, railroads, stock markets, banking, government and a host of other critical systems are mostly inoperable without GPS today. So how a GPS outage affects a boat at sea is not that important really in the grand scheme of things.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

Mobile phones, power plants, railroads, stock markets, banking, government and a host of other critical systems are mostly inoperable without GPS today. So how a GPS outage affects a boat at sea is not that important really in the grand scheme of things.

Very true.

A good description of GPS usage in a wide range of sectors:
https://www.gps.gov/applications/timing/

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Playing the devil's advocate -- commercial vessels are not using Android phones connected to TV's. Not all electronic charting is the same.



I am mostly electronic myself, but one has to keep in mind the limitations of vector charts on small screens (or TV's). In order to see all the detail you need to see to properly plan a passage, and avoid doing a Team Vestas or U.S.S. Guardian, you need a big screen, and you need either raster charts or you need to use vector charts carefully, zooming in to a sufficient degree along the whole route.

Don’t most boats have multiple computers and a least one big screen aboard now? Especially with people who work from the boat. Commercial charts are available to buy. There’s no need to use an Android or any other phone.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

Don’t most boats have multiple computers and a least one big screen aboard now? Especially with people who work from the boat. Commercial charts are available to buy. There’s no need to use an Android or any other phone.

Yes indeed they do have multiple computers and a least one big screen aboard ...
And anywhere you can access your phone, your tablet, or your big screen , the sea can also access it....

On my last major sea passage I had a Dell netbook ( yes I know ... rather quaint) become airborne ... discover that it had no wings ...and then spear into a few inches of water on the lee side under the stove.... and that was the end of that.
The 'big screen' survived the voyage after a fashion ... but had 'moisture creep' aka 'rising damp' and was scrapped on arrival.

Phones? Toys..... nada mas ..
Tablets? I have an Ipad Mini bought as a controller for a drone... have I-sailor on it... nice enough in coastal waters on a fine day... as much use as tits on a bull when its a bit fresh..

Day to day offshore navigation? Cupla puters, Opencpn, Cmap, a brace of gps pucks, Paper... lots of paper..., ..... all pretty well secured down in the 'walk through'..

[B23iL23]

5 chartplotters, 2 ipads with Navionics, 1 laptop with opencpn, unknown number of phones...

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

Don’t most boats have multiple computers and a least one big screen aboard now? Especially with people who work from the boat. Commercial charts are available to buy. There’s no need to use an Android or any other phone.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by CassidyNZ

Cmon Adeline, this argument is getting old. Do you seriously worry about the GPS constellation falling out of the sky? Your boat sinking, you or someone on your boat suffering a heart attack are real possibilities. You should and probably do plan for those.

But failure of the GPS system that you appear to worry about has got to be in the realm of several decimal places of one %

One way or another I’m over this discussion.

A. Learn to spell
B. I do not seriously worry about it but still take precautions. Actually the precautions are more related to not trusting electronics to being invulnerable than to worries about the sat nav constellations failing.
C. Chances of GPS not working on the boat whatever the cause are on the same order of magnitude or higher than the boat sinking.
D. If you have been offshore on your boat you probably have or had a liferaft but almost certainly you did not carry and AED so don't talk to me about rational responses to risk.

[transmitterdan]

Actually a lot of cruising boats carry an AED. It may be prudent in many cases.

We must learn to deal with electronic navigation in a suitably redundant way. Just whinging on about electronics being unreliable at sea misses the point. Few things on board are as reliable as GPS receivers. And simple steps already outlined above can make the probability of not having a GPS derived direction to steer infinitesimally low. Even today it’s possible to have a 6 Sigma GPS system on board for less than $500USD. Why would anyone not want to do that?

[Pizzazz]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

Don’t most boats have multiple computers and a least one big screen aboard now? Especially with people who work from the boat. Commercial charts are available to buy. There’s no need to use an Android or any other phone.

The beauty of an Android phone is that it has amazing functionality. You can get a prepaid phone with a large 5" display for $49. It gives you charts (vector or raster if you want), COG, SOG, weather, weather routing and weather data, messaging, pictures, video, music. You can easily project to a large screen TV to have a better view. For coastal navigation it is hard to match. For offshore, you can pair it with an Inreach or Go and you get messaging + weather. It is also very low power. Nothing comes close to this feature set. I believe every serious sailor should have a couple of those as backup devices, with extra batteries or external power brick. Not to mention that you can do approx. celestial navigation on it as well, even without a sextant.

For actually driving the boat you need an autopilot, a chart plotter (preferably with buttons instead of touch but it is a personal preference) and a radar. These items are expensive and require a lot of integration work and then, because they are so hard to work with, people fail to learn how to use them effectively. Paper charts is just a distraction to all of this in my opinion.

My favourite sailing experiences have been with an old android phone on a charter boat in the Greek Islands (nothing worked on the boat, no depth, no speed, no wind sensors) but we still did great; with an android phone/Inreach combo while crossing the Atlantic (we rarely used the boats electronics, mostly the radar for weather and approaching squalls). My current boat has a fully integrated electronics suite with three chart plotters, radar, SSB/data, etc. but the additional information has not changed the experience significantly. It is all about sail handling and weather routing and less about piloting. I think many people feel the same but get dragged into getting the latest electronics or musing about low probability failure events instead of enjoying the boat with what you have.

SV Pizzazz

[noelex 77]

In these discussions people always seem to confuse charts and position fixing. These are really two different bits of information.

Electronic charts work fine without GPS and paper charts work fine with a GPS fix.

The loss of a satellite fix will affect the use of both charting systems.

[transmitterdan]

It’s about more than just having cool devices. Here is a partial list of requirements for backup navigation devices I have created and hope others will add or comment:

1) At least two (three?) dedicated handheld GPS receivers with ability to navigate to a waypoint. Must be battery powered using readily available alkaline batteries with a month’s supply of batteries all stored together in emergency grab bag. A phone or tablet does not meet the minimum criteria for this item. Leave batteries out of GPS until ready for use.

2) handwritten list of GPS waypoints with descriptions based on current passage plan. If things go wrong you can enter one of the desired waypoints into handheld GPS and get a course to steer. Use waterproof paper to write the coordinates and descriptions. Keep the list updated throughout the passage.

3) multiple methods of communicating (SSB, sat phone, sat text/email terminal, handheld VHF) with list of frequencies, phone numbers or email addresses. A way to recharge the sat device from alkaline batteries. Extra batteries enough to operate the sat and VHF devices for 24 hours continuously. Keep the sat device well protected at all times. Don’t bring sat device on deck except for short usage. Keep it below or in the emergency grab bag. Give strong consideration to having a second sat device if your data plan allows it.

4) crude lead line made of a dive weight and small flexible line marked every foot for 12 feet and then in fathoms up to 10 fathoms (total line length ~75 feet).

5) 7X50 waterproof binoculars. Bonus if it has range scales and compass. Keep in grab bag.

6) quality hand bearing compass on strong neck lanyard. Know how to use it. The bino compass is not a substitute for this critical item. Keep it in the grab bag.

7) AIS/DSC alert device on all crew PFDs. If you have these then at least one handheld VHF should also have DSC feature in addition to ships VHF w/DSC. You can locate overboard crew with just the handheld.

Leave the sextant and tables at home. Spend your free time learning every feature of your handhelds (GPS, compass, VHF, etc).

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Pizzazz

The beauty of an Android phone is that it has amazing functionality. You can get a prepaid phone with a large 5" display for $49. It gives you charts (vector or raster if you want), COG, SOG, weather, weather routing and weather data, messaging, pictures, video, music. You can easily project to a large screen TV to have a better view. For coastal navigation it is hard to match. For offshore, you can pair it with an Inreach or Go and you get messaging + weather. It is also very low power. Nothing comes close to this feature set. I believe every serious sailor should have a couple of those as backup devices, with extra batteries or external power brick. Not to mention that you can do approx. celestial navigation on it as well, even without a sextant.

It's true. Yeah to me this is still really amazing. Kids today are used to monstrous computing power packed into a wrist watch size, but to me I'm just still really astounded to see my Lat/Long pop up on just about every electronic thing in the boat! (It's probably how folks felt when they discovered the wheel or fire.) And they work, reliably, it's true, for years, so much so that we grow to assume they will continue to. And I do rely on mine. But ditching the paper charts seems a little silly to me, and not just for reasons of nostalgia... they live quietly under a bunk causing no interference to life... but that's just one more opinion.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

2) handwritten list of GPS waypoints with descriptions based on current passage plan. If things go wrong you can enter one of the desired waypoints into handheld GPS and get a course to steer. Use waterproof paper to write the coordinates and descriptions. Keep the list updated throughout the passage.

Planning a passage with OpenCPN, I copy the route data (right click anywhere in the Route Properties list and select "Copy all as text") and paste it into Excel.


Then I add/delete/format data as desired and print out several copies.