Having had two new knees, my wife decided after 40 years to give up the dubious pleasure of sailing with me. So, we sold our 10m boat and I bought a little Beneteau Antares 620 to allow me to remain afloat and catch some of the dwindling fish stocks in the Solent.
During all those decades, I appreciated the use of various electronic instruments that assisted my navigational skills. But I couldn’t justify spending over £1,000 for the latest touchscreen chartplotter because it would be uneconomical for a 20ft boat that only, at most, coastal hops.
However, the convenience of instantly knowing where you are and whether a large vessel is bearing down on you when a blanket of fog descends meant that an up-to-date chartplotter was essential for my peace of mind.
My priorities were: it should have a 10in sunlight viewable touch screen; it should display Admiralty charts, to correspond with my Admiralty paper charts; it must display AIS images, as I’d found that over the last 10 years I was using AIS in preference to radar; it has to work on a 12Vpower supply and be affordable, and it must have a GPS receiver embedded.
Dead ends
I’ve had the excellent Memory
