Route Planning with GPS Navigation Software

[ffheap]

Hi Folks,

I know you might not like this comment, but I still like to do things the old fashion way. I plan my cruises using paper charts. I then have a chance to study, not just the immediate route and what may be in the way, but what may be my alternate routes. Often, using electronics, we do not study our charts. enough. Pushing buttons may get us to miss things, like the unmarked rock in our path. Electronic charting does not see the things in our way.

Then when we load the information on to the chart plotter screen, we add something that will take our mind and eyes from one part of safe boating, that of looking around to see what may cross our path.

It is so easy to forget our lookout duties, and it happens to us all. A couple of years ago, on my first trip of the year, I was fiddling with my radio because it was not working right. (I had to purchase another radio.) I looked up and saw a bouy of to my port quarter. I forgot about current, and side swiped the bouy because I was concentrating on the radio.

I believe that with electronic charts etc, the we are adding to our C-Dory's can lead us to trouble, because we forget to be a good lookout as well as a good navigator.

Fred Heap

[Pat Anderson]

Point one, "unmarked rocks." Charted rocks show up on the electronic charts the same way they show up on paper charts - not sure what you mean by "unmarked" rocks, since I presume those don't show up on paper charts either. Maybe you are talking about uncharted rocks, and that of course is just a look-out function.

Point two, it is easier to split your attention between the way ahead and a chartplotter screen right in front of the helm than it is between the way ahead and a paper chart. Lookout duties versus fiddling with things, Patty would say I resemble that remark!

Point three, electronic chartplotters lead to trouble - disagree 100%, but you are certainly entitled to navigate however floats your boat! For ourselves, knowing EXACTLY where we are and where we are going at all times, with waypoints and routes carefully laid out in advance, is the only way. With a second handheld GPS chartplotter, the only way we are likely to get into trouble is if the government turns the satellites off. Paper charts for a backup of course.

[oldgrowth]

Pat - I agree with you. It is much easier and safer to navigate with electronic charts than paper charts. However, I agree with Fred in that it is easier to use paper charts on the kitchen table for an overall look at the route.

[ffheap]

I like your answer Pat. Points well taken. Just had to put my ideas on the table for discussion.

Fred

[Byrdman]

Pat... be aware that the sat's do get blocked when the pres or vp is flying "in the area..." which who really knows what that area is. Lost mine up in NJ for about 1 hour..... but, no real big deal because I was in a truck and it was time to eat anyway...but, if I had been working some tricky waters...... it may have been time to pull out of the channel and have a nice sundowner... which happened with the meal anyway.
Byrdman

[True Story]

The last half dozen posts could be contained in a new topic titled Route Planning with GPS Navigation Software as I'd be interested to hear how others go about this task.

I'd agree with Pat that nothing beats understanding our exact location at any point in time in respect to the features around us. I'd hate to be without my chartplotter. However, imo based on a limited amount of experience, ffheap makes some very excellent points.

On my Standard Horizon chartplotter which utilizes C-Maps, I lose detail as I zoom out to gain a better understanding of the overall desired route. Establishing way points in this scale mode is inviting disaster as the ultimate sin is to establish a route without the best available information regardless of your look out capabilities. When I attempt to establish routes in a scale providing the most information, I lose my perspective, zoom out, recogninze I could have placed the way point in a better location, zoom back in, relocate the way point and continue on with this burdensome process.

I would imagine a certain amount of this messing around would be aleviated if I was working from a bigger screen but I'm not. Consequently, I find using paper charts to identify approximate way points a considerably faster and safer approach to defining my routes. Once the waypoints are established, transferring their location to the chart plotter is a quick and easy process.

[Da Nag]

[True Story]

WOW. Hopefully, I still have a few more wishes left in the bottle.

[Alyssa Jean]

This is somewhat of a magical site sometimes.

[dogon dory]

Sorry, Folks - Post Deleted By Author

[Chris Bulovsky]

FF Heap-Having a Chart plotter sure is nice. I like the fact it shows your position overlayed on the map.....Not where you "think you are" also leaves a trail so a fellow can back track. I look at the depth as well.

This Lowrance unit you can customize it to your needs and desires.

Also with the display at the helm you can glance down and confirm your position wile keeping an eye on the road watching for "water hazards" nets, dead heads, kayakers ect. I like the kiss principle and the chart plotter meets that for my needs and desires.

This system aquanauts one with new water and and can keep people out of trouble. I understand that rivers are dynamic but for Lake Superior and the Apostle Island Nat. lake Shore its a super nice tool to have on hand.

my 2 cents.

Chris Bulovsky

[Pat Anderson]

OK, here is the drill for plotting a route. This is the way I have done it so far on both the Garmin Map Source PC software for the 188C and GPSMAP76 and Coastal Explorer for the laptop and HOPE to do it with some C-80 compatible PC software package in the future - evidently not NavPlanner! Maybe a NMEA cable connection from Coastal Explorer to the C-80. You can use the same approach directly on the chartplotter, but it is CONSIDERABLY more difficult.

The basic premise is to plan your overall route from the 50,000 foot level and then edit the details from the 100 foot level.

You have consulted your Waggoner, Douglass, or other cruising guide and have a pretty good idea of how far you are going per day and what you want to see, right? You START with the view zoomed back to see the big picture, say 1:1,000,000 - even at this scale you have to do some panning for a long journey! So I am going to start a new route, and click on Squalicum in Bellingham, Blaine Harbor or Shilshole usually for the first waypoint. I then very quickly move to what looks like the best way to go to my destination, clicking to insert waypoints turn by turn to the destination, and then end the route (you can always extend the route later of course). THEN go back to the start, zoom in tighter, say 1:150,000 or even tighter, to see the obstacles to navigation and stay in the navigational channels (I start seeing the charted rocks at about 1:250,000), and start dragging waypoints (it really is as easy as "click and drag") - you can easily insert additional waypoints in the route if you see you need some more turns. The first cut from 50,000 feet up will not only have me going through rocks, kelp and shoals - it will PROBABLY have me trying to navigate over land at a few places! But it is so easy to edit the route this way, that in a few minutes, I have fixed it up from Blaine to Ketchikan (lets just say, for example!)

Now, if you have a Garmin, and this is the real strength of these units, you just connect your data cord from the PC to the chartplotter, choose the menu option on Map Source to transfer to the chartplotter and you are done. Waypoints and routes are transferred, easy as pie. If Garmin radar had not been brand new last year, we would have chosen Garmin for this ability alone.

On the C-80, for now, there is another drill. I have planned the route on Coastal Explorer. I then choose the option to export the route to an Excel spreadsheet. I then use this to cut and paste to another Excel spreadsheet in the format needed by the free Raymarine utility PC Waypoint (if you have a C-80 and are not using this program, you are seriously missing the boat, folks). This is admittedly a bit labor intensive, but SO much easier than manually entering waypoints in the C-80 directly. Then run the spreadsheet through the PC Waypoint utility, which converts it to a file format the C-80 can read directly, save to your CF card, and import from the CF card to the C-80. Easier and quicker to do than it is to describe. You get waypoints only, and you have to connect the dots to make into a route, but that is really not too difficult. it would really be easy if the two speadsheet formats were the same, but they are not - PC Waypoint needs a specific format, and it is just plain different from the Coastal Explorer export - maybe some enterprising Excel programmer will write some macros to automatically reformat the Coastal Explorer format to PC Waypoint format!

Now, I don't know what facilities exist for planning on a PC and then getting waypoint data into your Standard Horizon - if there aren't any, that is a big strike against a brand in my mind (that is the situation I realized we were in before finding PC Waypoint for the C-80, and I was pretty grumpy about it for a while). A final option would be to print out the Coastal Explorer or other PC software waypoint data and manually enter the lat/lon coordinates in the chartplotter - still easier than trying to do it visually directly on the chartplotter.

OUT