I single hand in the San Juan islands where there a lots of hazards, traffic
and currents. Going below to check my course and location are not practical
so I don't use the laptop for navigation. I won't take the laptop on deck
when sailing and I'm not all that trusting in its reliability anyway. I use
Nobletec to plan my routes in the evening and upload them to my Garmin 176.
I can link my routes in Nobletec to the tide currents and it predicts the
best departure times. This is very useful for me. I have an outlet on
deck that I plug the GPS into for power and nmea output to the autopilot and
VHF. This system works out very well for me though it's not an inexpensive
approach since you need to purchase two sets of charts.


"nfsnfs" wrote in message
...

I just bought a 12 year old C&C 37/40R and, along with the 1287 odd jobs
that come along with used boats, I would like to install a GPS chart
plotter. There are dozens of possible solutions straight out of the
West Marine catalog but a friend highly recommended software on a
laptop instead.

He uses Nobletec and seems committed, but I thought I might ask a wider
audience for recommendations / disrecommendations. Also, his setup
involves parking the laptop on the chart table below, whereas I would
like something visible from the helm. That would mean an extra screen
that will stand up to salt water and running some wiring, but if
charting software is better/cheaper/faster than what gets plugged into
the integrated plotters, I'd like to know before I start.

Any advice for a greenhorn?


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