in the market for a pad

[Art Haberland]

I have used both Android and Ipad.. and I like both for different reasons. As I am in the market for a new one.. which has the best (subjective I know) apps for navigation and other boat related activities?

[dlymn]

Most commercial navigation apps have packages for ipad and android. If you are in America, you might try flytomaps, but it's nowhere near as useful as say Navionics.

One day OpenCPN might just work on these platforms without you being a techie.

I reckon a more important question is which tablet is waterproof, shockproof and has a screen bright enough to see in daylight. Also does it have a magnetic compass and will it connect to satellites rapidly (the 4g ipad wins hands down on these 2 points, but not too well on the others)

even well mounted at the helm, it's not hard to do damage in a blow and you certainly shouldn't leave it lying around on cockpit seats. There's no point having it if you have to go below to use it.

[Art Haberland]

good to know. This is all for backup.. My boat is at best a coastal cruiser (23 feet) so most of my navigation is by taking sightings off of landmarks. It would just be nice to be able to double check with something electronic.

As my boat is only 23 feet, her electrical system is basic at best, so handheld and battery powered things are in order

[dlymn]

We use a small Garmin chartplotter for all our go tos, but always back up using an ipad. we also have apps on our android phones and laptops but only use them for planning at night or showing people what a nav app looks like. Still, it's always good to have built in redundancy and also independence from the boat battery. The chartplotter is very accurate (but so too is the ipad) and it has a 'guide to' which plots a course around the coast. It's not connected to the Autopilot and this is not so bad if you are mostly sailing or inattentive

We use Flytomaps on the ipad, Navionics on the android tablet and phone, and OpenCPN on the lappie. Quite unnecessary but I like the stuff. At night, I get out the lappie and check out the course for the next day. Check for reefs, rocks, vhf numbers, phone numbers, mooring details, picture of port etc. This give me some knowledge of our cruise and more importantly, details about the most dangerous part, going out and coming in to port.

Most days we motor out of port, find the next port on the chartplotter, push the guide to button and sail away. When we get a couple hundred metres off course, we trim the autopilot.
the chartplotter will guide us to the centre of the port entry but we are always in control of the boat ourselves. Coming into port we use the charplotter, ipad and the good old eyeball. This redunancy has saved our bacon a couple of times.

[chad.lawie]

We just delivered a boat from Annapolis to Muskegon on the Great Lakes. We used an iPad with navionics as the primary navigation.

Life proof case for the iPad.

Navionics app now has "heading up" option which it pretty cool.

Main downfall I experienced was battery life. I think this came down to having the wrong charger.

Not being able to see the screen in the sun was a minor annoyance easily resolved.

Another issue I've heard about is overheating but we didn't run into any issues with that. I could see it being a problem further south or if you don't have a place to put your device in the shade.

[Rainh2o2]

I've played with my Android using MX mariner...seems to work well. Used on my phone and my Android 8.4 inch tablet. Haven't seriously used it for any long voyages though

Sent from my SM-T320 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[accomplice]

In spite of having the fancy networked Furuno chartplotters, when transiting coastal, I regularly use an iPad (sometimes), an Android tablet (usually), and an Android phone (sometimes) running either Navionics or nvCharts. My biggest complaint, something I need to solve, is how to mount the tablet/phone so that is visible yet doesn't get knocked around or sat-on.

While the big chartplotters are great, the tablets let me more easily/quickly zoom in to parts of the route that lie ahead and plan my approaches. Also, the chartplotters are at the navstation or mounted where they're visible from the whole cockpit, but I keep the tablet/phone so it can be manipulated from the helm.

[travellerw]

I haven't used it yet, but this mount was suggested to me. I purchased it but haven't had a chance to mount it on the boat. There are different versions with suction cups or screw down mounts. The bar mount works for me.



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1