Best GPS Chart Plotter for trailer sailor

[drumbeater]

Good buy. I have a small Humminbird, and it's ok for speed, depth, etc. But I dont really like the chartplotter aspect, and in B&W is really hard to read.
I do use my Navionics app on my iphone alot. It was only $9.99. I'd bet it would be perfect on an Ipad, but I dont have one.

 

[Merlin Clark]

I gottem somewhere... We completed CYA Coastal Nav a few years ago. Now I'm learning the sextant.

It's really cool to have new things to learn in middle age!

A sextant is deeper than I want to go- good on ya Ken!

 

[Chris Patterson]

Aw man. Really a sextant is not the mystery that it looks, they're actually quite simple. As long as you have the current nautical almanac, and sight reduction tables. The shot is way easy despite what the crazy thing looks like. The associated math takes some book lernin, but if a dummy like me can figure it out, smart people would be a whiz at it. It's truly very gratifying. And dependent on NO electronics. At least you have the "reassurance" of knowing if the batteries are fried, or the plotter dies.

But in this techno world a lot of people have a half dozen GPS's on board. It's still cool though. At the very least, it'll teach you how to stand steady on the deck..

 

[kenn]

A sextant is deeper than I want to go- good on ya Ken!

Heh. Thanks merlin.

As Chris says, using the sextant to get the angle of something in the sky (sun, moon, certain stars) is relatively easy... it's all the chart lookups and bring all the right factors together to determine a position. My brain was made expressly for Cartesian geometry and trigonometry and intricate gadgets (and little else, which is why my wife is so important), so the coastal nav and table stuff hasn't been that much of a problem for me.

My main reason for learning the sextant is to connect more with the history of sailing, and to pay more attention to the sky. But I still have a GPS or two around.

 

[walt]

Sextant... I can’t even get past the name, how could I hope to figure it out?


A couple things on the Lowrance.. these have an anchor alarm and one thing I tried recently was to see what the current draw on mine was when I turned down the display brightness. When I’m on the map screen with full brightness, the smaller ones like I have (Mark 4 and Elite 4) draw about 160 ma. If I’m using this for an anchor alarm, it would be inside the boat cabin and I would turn the display brightness way down. When I did this, I measured about 110 ma. So leaving this on all night would draw about 1 amp hour. I suspect you would not get that low with the larger model but possibly close.

Also, these models have a micro SD card slot. If you try to buy one at about any store, you can only find micro SDHC cards and they do not work - it must be just a micro SD (no HC). The micro SD card only goes up to 2 G and I was only able to find them online - ordered two for about $8. The main reason I got the card was to save screen shots and on mine, the screen shot came in a little lower resolution than I wanted but overall adequate. Attached are a couple screen shots. On mine, you just press two buttons in sequence to get the screen shot.

 

[Merlin Clark]

"Cartesian geometry and trigonometry"?
Dude, I'm an old diver and bomb guy. Stuff like that makes me want to go blow something up!

 

[r.oril]

Walt - I just so happen to have one of those SD Cards in my stuff!!

 

[HankPhillips]

We use a Navman 5500 and have a Garmin Colorado 400c as a backup. Overkill on a 25ft boat, but it will go with us when we move up in size.