Offshore racing navigation systems…a high quality second hand solution

by The Sail-World Team on 22 Jul 2002 Many offshore racing boats use on-board plotters, which provided a vectorised image of the waters in which it’s sailing. These days they are pretty good but these generally present considerably less information than is on the actual Australian paper charts.

The Australian Hydrographic office has provided the complete set of Charts, on a CD. These can be displayed in full colour, using Endeavour Navigator and once you’ve used those for critical coastal navigation, then you’d never go back to a plotter. Attached to the boat GPS, the full chart combination provides

The problem is that computers often have short lives on a 30-50 foot racing boat. Innocents often take their laptops just for one race onto the Nav. Station.

An hour or two of the bone jarring slamming that can happen offshore in a 30+ knots breeze, will usually see off the hard drive

And if it’s not the slamming that gets it, then it’s just the drips off the Musto HPX or the little wave when the hatch is left open will allow water into the electronics.

A marinised computer, with a shock mounted hard drive; rubber port covers and sealed keyboard will solved that problem. The kind of military spec’d computer that you can rinse the salt off the keyboard. But remember the cost of mill spec toilet seats???

Include a full set of Australian and South Pacific charts and you’ll see no change out of $12,000

It happens that one only Panasonic Tough Book, with Endeavour Navigator 4.0 and a full Australian Chart set is right now available second hand for a quarter of that amount. Tested on the racetrack, its sailed to Hobart in less than 60 hours.

If you are interested contact
mailto:media@sail-world.com