Budget Nav Setup?

[berniecurry]

Hi

What do y'all recommend for a good but budget nav setup for a 30 to 34 ft sailboat? I don't want a fully integrated suite of equipment, only GPS and charts from east coast Australia to east coast US?

Probably will have a stand alone log/depth indicator.

bernie.

[Karanga]

Can't go past OpenCPN.
Nuff said

[zachduckworth]

Depends what you are doing with it. For coastal cruising in SoCal I use Navionics on my phone and on a tablet with GPS. I added an active splitter and Quarkbox A026 so I can get AIS tracks on Navionics. Pretty awesome set-up, really, cost about $300, mostly the Quarkbox.

[Tupaia]

Originally Posted by berniecurry

Hi

What do y'all recommend for a good but budget nav setup for a 30 to 34 ft sailboat? I don't want a fully integrated suite of equipment, only GPS and charts from east coast Australia to east coast US?

Probably will have a stand alone log/depth indicator.

bernie.

That is half the globe in either direction, a lot of ground for a 30ft plus sailboat.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by berniecurry

Hi

What do y'all recommend for a good but budget nav setup for a 30 to 34 ft sailboat? I don't want a fully integrated suite of equipment, only GPS and charts from east coast Australia to east coast US?

Probably will have a stand alone log/depth indicator.

bernie.

East or westabout?

I find I-sailor (for apple as they don't do android) very good. I have that, openCPN, and (old) C-map. I-sailor is my pick. Plus paper.

[berniecurry]

Thank you for the info about I-sailor, I will look it up (plus OpenCPN). I plan to have some oceanic paper and pilots for the east coast US and perhaps SA.

Westabout - does that affect your recommendation in any way that I can not see?

[requiem]

In terms of what's available for the recreational market, iSailor is up there in terms of functionality and reasonably-priced charts. OpenCPN can work if the chart coverage needed can be obtained via O-charts. At least US charts are free, so it's only the other places to worry about. I run SEAiq myself, but for non-US charts you'd pay full price and that adds up.

The log/depth meter is a basic essential, but once you're doing long passages and are out at night I'd really want to have radar (which also means looking for a budget plotter). AIS is nice too, but at this point you might as well include wind instruments.

Apart from that I'd just use a tablet/laptop and mainly keep them below. Oh, and calibrate your compass.

[Franziska]

You can also generate MBtile charts from a number of sources with SASplanet.

What will you use as Autopilot?

[sailingharry]

There are a lot of recommendations for OpenCPN. In the US, where the charts are free, it makes the cash outlay zero. Depending upon your IT skills and your willingness to fight with it, it can be a bit of an aggravation to get it set up. Not hard, but certainly not "turn it on and use it" either.

For our last 2 years, where we spent considerable time in Canada, we found that Navionics was massively cheaper and easier. It is an annual fee of about $25, but that $25 covers all the devices you have and requires zero setup or configuration, and covered the entire US and Canada for that price. Frankly don't recall what happened after those two countries, as I didn't go there. While Navionics is a web-based app, it would automatically download and keep charts of any place you looked at. To prepare for an offshore passage, you would simply view the passage or box it and select download.

We had an occasional issue with Navionics which was quite disturbing. It would work perfectly offline for a long period of time, but sporadically it would lose authentication. At that point, it became non-functional. Not sure if that was something I did, or what. But it was one troubling issue.

I believe aquamap is very similar in features and desirability.

[sailingharry]

Originally Posted by Franziska

You can also generate MBtile charts from a number of sources with SASplanet.

What will you use as Autopilot?

Autopilot integration is a thing, and some people find it useful. I completed the integration on my last boat, and it came on this boat, but in a decade and 10,000 miles I have probably not used that integration more than a handful of times. I point the boat and then press autopilot, plus and minus 10 as needed.

However, there is one phenomenal benefit of linking them. For many boats, the autopilot is the only digital compass on the boat. Linking the autopilot to the chart plotter gives you both course and heading -- generally very useful and exceptionally so at very low speeds where course is very inaccurate.

[tkeithlu]

We use Open CPN on a refurbished rugged Lenovo 10.5 inch laptop that folds over to be a tablet/monitor in front of the wheel, with a separate bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Our total investment is under USD $170.

Oh. I forgot - a generic GPS "puck" antenna.

[boatman61]

I used to use Nimble Navigator with CM93 world charts on my laptop.. cost for the package was €100.
Sadly the creator seems to have died as there has been no activity on his site nor any response to emails, he lived on the Atlantic circuit aboard his boat so has either succumbed to Covid or gone down on one of his annual WEW passages.
I now use OpenCPN with CM93 charts I transfered from my Nimble program.. free till the laptop dies and needs replacing.

[Kettlewell]

As an aside, I use OpenCPN on my phone and laptops, along with paper charts here in the USA. But, Navionics does offer almost worldwide coverage, and at least here in the USA the extra features are useful. With either one there is an option if you happen to already use a current Samsung phone called NexDock. For about $300 it connects to your phone and can give you a laptop-like experience with most apps. For example, I can run OpenCPN on my phone but view the charts much larger on the NexDock while utilizing the phone's GPS and its data plan too. I have not used this combo for offshore navigation yet, but in experiments along the coast it works very well. I find the phone GPS is excellent, at least where I cruise. https://nexdock.com/

[JBP]

Originally Posted by berniecurry

Thank you for the info about I-sailor, I will look it up (plus OpenCPN). I plan to have some oceanic paper and pilots for the east coast US and perhaps SA.

Westabout - does that affect your recommendation in any way that I can not see?

I like having both paper and electronic charts, and use them differently. I like browsing the paper charts for planning and getting the "big picture". I like Open CPN for general navigation and it has a ton of features including integration with my boat's network. I like Navionics for piloting in harbors and also for checking out Active Captain reviews.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by berniecurry

Thank you for the info about I-sailor, I will look it up (plus OpenCPN). I plan to have some oceanic paper and pilots for the east coast US and perhaps SA.

Westabout - does that affect your recommendation in any way that I can not see?

Idle curiosity mainly.

Oceanic paper is good esp for passage planning.

What I find good is having raster charts - if you can find them - to run on openCPN so that I can compare them with iSailor cartography.
Comparison examples to follow.

I run openCPN on my Macbook and also on the ship's old PC running W11.
The base charts on open CPN are my original 'burgle brand ' C-map from 20 years ago.
i-sailor is on my iphone, and two ipads.