SECTION HEAD SUB SECTION
Smartphone: Makes a good mobile plotter
This allows the user to move from one type of chart to another, and includes Navionics charts for Europe, although it is more aimed at the American user with its free charts of North American waters. Last year, Imray developed a system using its own excellent raster charts, which have gone down well with Caribbean sailors, who appreciate the input of Don Street. UK coverage costs £32 and works with Imray’s own plotter app. Extras include aerial photos, waypoints, course to steer and a useful tidal interface, which allows you to interpolate tidal data. Imray rolls the system out to Denmark, Germany and the Baltic this season.
WEATHER APPS
Another interesting line of apps for boaters is weather information. As well as your favourite websites – BBC,
findafishingboat.com – it’s worth checking out Weather 4D Pro (£21.99), a worldwide coverage app, Weather Track (www.weathertrack. us - $19.99, £12.40) and HF Weather Fax for ocean sailing. This latter interfaces with an SSB radio, translating the digital information (from its speaker or headphones) and showing the synoptic chart. At $2.99 (£1.85), it’s one of the cheapest systems on the market, and allows you to get rid of the bulky WeatherFax printer… if you dare.
More and more delivery crews are downloading Navionics charts to their smartphones and using the GPS-equipped devices as chartplotters. One of the reasons seems to be that plotters all have their own idiosyncracies and can take time to master. So if you can have a basic chartplotter in your pocket, in the form of a smartphone, you can save time getting to know the ship’s system. Some phones are even weatherproof, but with most handsets, it’s well worth putting them in something like an Aquapac case – now designed for use with touchscreen phones. With charts covering the entire Caribbean
costing just £10.40 online, the advantages are obvious. True, the charts are limited by the size of screen – something like Samsung’s Galaxy with its 4.3in (11cm) touchscreen is about the minimum feasible. But the charts work in the same way as a touchscreen
plotter, so you can scroll around them and zoom up and down through layers of detail.
WHAT YOU NEED
Both the base map and the application to view it are bought in a bundle, downloadable to either the phone or a PC. The app takes about 16MB of space, but the charts can run to more than 1GB. The phone needs to be equipped with GPS, but some handsets don’t work well when out of mobile range. However, the older Samsung model that we
tested worked well without network (mid Atlantic), giving us latitude, longitude, speed and direction – very useful for transferring to a paper chart. Even without the plotter app, the phone acts as a back-up navigation aid.
www.play.google.com – search ‘Navionics’
SPOT Tracker: Keep in touch with loved ones
SPOT is a personal locator device that also lets loved ones know your exact position – useful when out of mobile phone range. The devices retail for around £140 and interface with a webpage, which plots your position using Google Maps. You can share access with those who might like to know where you are. SPOT’s other obvious benefit is an
emergency button, which alerts rescue services. It can also be used to send pre-programmed messages, such as a regular “I’m OK” signal. You can choose from various service packages costing from €99 (£81) to €139 (£114) per year. The alternative Inmarsat phone can be an expensive way of keeping in touch, so the SPOT makes economic sense.
The worst aspect is having to send the OK signal every day – at more or less the same time. We found the SPOT’s reception was intermittent, sometimes failing to send, and giving the impression we had disappeared, worrying those at home. It seems like one of those technologies
that are great if all works smoothly, but which can backfire.
www.findmespot.eu CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2012 65
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