Well I have a 25 year old C&C 37 with a Garmin GPSMap 188C mounted at the
helm and I like it very much. I have a second antenna that lets me study
the plotter down below in the evenings and plan routes.
As another poster said, going below to study your laptop when you are in
tricky waters doesn't seem too prudent even if you have crew looking out.
Then again I have a friend who thinks my 188C screen is just too small and
he also does not like the look of the Garmin Bluecharts. He likes something
that looks exactly like a paper chart, ie. NDI echarts.
He is planning on using OziExplorer ($100) on his laptop for his navigation.
He plans to mount it on a swing arm so that he can position it in the
companionway and see it from the helm.
This might work if he can shade it somehow otherwise I don't think its going
to be bright enough in direct sunlight (its a fairly new Sony Vaio).
I recently bought an old PII 400MHz laptop and put Ozi onto it. The big
screen is nice but again I'm not fussy about going below. The 188C also
gives you quite a bit of other info that Ozi does not but I guess more
expensive programs would include things like VMG, ETA, etc.
"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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