MODERN MARINE ELECTRONICS: My Obsolete Chartplotter

I’ve been hustling a bit to get ready for this jaunt to Nova Scotia, which starts Monday. As noted earlier, I’ve been fretting about the charts. Thanks to Landfall Navigation, I now have all my paper charts in hand, plus tide tables and a 2014 Nautical Alamanac, just in case the world as we know it comes to an end and I have to exercise my sextant. But the really hard part, it turned out, was getting electronic charts for my 7-year-old Raymarine A65 chartplotter.

Landfall’s website, you’ll recall, purported to have a relevant chart card that was compatible with my machine, and I tried to buy that, but afterwards they confessed via e-mail that their website lied to me and the card really was not compatible. What you need to buy, I was told, is a blank Navionics Plus CF card, and then load it with the charts you want at the Navionics website. So I bought that instead, and they delivered it to me very promptly. And I went out and bought a card reader at Radio Shack, so I could plug the CF card into my desktop computer to download my charts… AND the very first thing that happened when I tried to do that was a prompt telling me these charts would not be compatible with my plotter.

So now I was ready to put a cap in my head. Fortunately, I do not actually own a handgun, and my finger tips do not emit bullets, so I called Navionics instead. Even more fortunately, I got a smart guy on the phone.

“Actually, your plotter might be able to read those charts,” he told me.

And he talked me through the download, advising me to load as little data as possible, so as to increase the chances of my plotter being able to cope with it. I took the card to my boat to slot it into the plotter… and LO! It displays the charts (see photo up top), but any function that involves moving around the chart–zooming in and out, scrolling hither and yon–is incredibly clunky and slow.

It’s better than nothing, but I am still gnashing my teeth over the fact that a device I paid well over $1,000 for, and the suite of chart cards I bought for several hundred dollars to plug into it, is now all on the verge of becoming useless crap, not because there is anything wrong with it, but simply because the manufacturers who sold it me are no longer interested in those products. In fact, I learned, the last charts that were truly compatible with my plotter were released in 2009, just two years after I bought the plotter.

In the world of modern electronics, marine and otherwise, this is not at all unusual, but it is still EVIL. And wasteful. And irresponsible.

In this modern miracle age I assume it would be a relatively simple matter for electronic chart manufacturers to allow consumers to download old versions of charts that are fully compatible with antique machines that are more than a few years old. Indeed, I would pay A SIGNIFICANT PREMIUM to be able to do that, and I suspect many others would too.

Hint, hint.

Meanwhile, last weekend I made a more concerted effort to get the hang of navigating on my iPad while noodling around Casco Bay on my own. In the photo there you can see Lunacy beating out of the north end of the bay, past Little Whaleboat Island, in a relatively light breeze.

I have to admit I am now a little more comfortable with the concept of iPad navigation, but I will never trust it completely. My iPad is constantly refusing to do things I want it to do, and misbehaving generally, so it is hard to consider it a serious piece of navigation equipment.

To give you an idea of what a Luddite I am, another major chore in preparation for this mini-voyage was manufacturing the little wood chips I need to connect my Aries windvane to my tillerpilot ram.

These chips are effectively sacrificial fuses for my “electronic autopilot,” in that they are the first thing to break when things get too loaded up. I reckon I could create an unbreakable metal chip, but then I worry I might harm my antique pilot ram, or worse the windvane itself, when things get crazy. So instead I’ve been experimenting, trying to make a chip that is as strong as possible, but still sacrificial.

My latest experiment was to make a chip out of plastic Starboard (bottom item in this photo), but it didn’t last very long and broke last weekend after just a couple of weeks of service. In the photo you can also see an abortion of a teak chip (upper left), that I thoughtlessly cut with the grain aligned the wrong way (and immediately broke in two with my bare hands), and one properly cut chip (upper right).

Here’s the good chip installed at the end of my tillerpilot ram. After a bit more sawing, and filing, and drilling, I also have two good spares to back it up.

I also decided to remark my anchor chain. I marked it with paint last time, but paint wears away pretty quickly. This time I’m trying bright orange wire-ties instead, which you can now see peeking out of the chain pile in the peak.

Finally, this is something I’ve been meaning to do ever since I bought the boat. A simple way to secure the linen that tends to get stuffed in the alcove under the side lockers up forward. Three little padeyes, a couple of hooks, and a length of bungee cord was all it took.