Best Navigational Software To Be Installed During A Refit?

[conachair]

Originally Posted by maxingout

Radar with a chart overlay would be extremely valuable. I have been at anchor at night in less than optimal conditions, and when a storm came up, I have had to use radar to get back to a safe position. Sometimes I have made an overlay on my radar screen so that I can get back to where I know it is safe if I drag anchor at night and need to put the anchor down again.

One night in the upper reaches of Prony Bay in New Caledonia we had a sudden tropical disturbance with about nine inches of rain and tons of wind, and I dragged anchor very badly during the storm. I would have been in real trouble if I had not had radar with an primitive overlay on my radar screen. It would have been much better if I had a chart plotter and radar combined overlay.

Down to budget again, not just the kit but all the chart folios you'll need to get for the plotter. I prefer the more important bits of kit to be stand alone as well, lose one you don't lose the lot.

[maxingout]

We used clear plastic overlays on top our radar screen in order to draw the radar contours of the shore and to mark our position in case we dragged in the dark. A bit primitive but it worked.

The options are better now and I agree that having things work on a stand alone basis is a smart things. I will never forget when we were in singapore and five yachts had their electronics vaporized in lightning strikes in the period of one week in monsoon season. We disconnect everything electronic in our nav station when we are in a thunderstorm. It only takes a minute or two to disconnect and reconnect everything. And if it is a horrible thunderstorm, we may place a couple of our devices in the oven as a faraday cage.

We once had a fireball come down from the top of the mast and then shoot back up to the top of the mast without doing any damage to electronics. Weird stuff.

So I will try to keep things standalone as much as possible and set them up for quick disconnect as well.

[UNCIVILIZED]

There are some good thoughts on setting up one's nav systems in this thread http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ow-191670.html
And thinking on it, threads with this theme seem to pop up every couple of months, including one a little while back when Dockhead was trying to do almost the exact same thing. So it's worth combing the archives. And if you do, please be kind enough to post all of the relevent links to similar threads in here. Having all of that info in one place would be Great!