Sail - July 2018

JULY 2018

Losing the Plotter

The deceptive simplicity of navigating by tablet By Andy Schell

W

hen my wife, Mia, and I i rst

crossed the Atlantic on our

Allied Seawind 36, Arcturus, in

2011, we used the same hand-

held GPS that my parents had aboard their

Bristol 38, Sojourner, in 1993 when we spent

the winter in the Bahamas when I was only

nine. We’ve never owned a i xed chartplotter.

On Isbjörn, our S&S Swan 48, we’re no lud-

dites, but we emphasize ei ciency, simplicity

and presence of mind in how we outi t her.

Which is why we now choose to navigate via

a dual iPad setup—a large, semi-i xed iPad at

the nav station below and a smaller, “portable”

iPad, running the same sot ware, that we can

bring up to the cockpit.

To give some context here, we’re of shore

most of the time on Isbjorn. In 2017 alone we

spent 137 days at sea, covering over 10,000

miles. Of shore, you don’t need a chartplotter,

save for the AIS data, and that only really in

poor visibility or when a ship is in sight. We

plot a position on our paper passage chart once

or twice a day and log the GPS position, DR

plot, etc. every four hours at the watch change

in the hardcopy logbook.

Inshore, of course, real-time navigation

on some kind of chartplotter is a nice luxury

and makes navigating much less stressful,

particularly in the labyrinthine archipelagos

on both coasts of Sweden, where we’ve spent

a lot of time recently. Still, in my mind at

least, less is more.

You see, I like a clean helm. I like a nice

compass, a big roll bar to hang on to and sim-

ple wind/depth/speed instruments mounted

over the companionway where everyone can

see them. When I’m on the helm, or teaching

a crew to drive the boat, I like to be present—

aware of my surroundings in the real-world,

both from a purely philosophically perspec-

tive, but also for spatial awareness, to keep

rooted in reality. Isn’t it ironic that while sail-

ing is a means of escape for many, with i xed

chartplotters we remain glued to our screens,

even at the helm?

A 30-something friend and Google employee

who’s currently on a mid-career sabbatical sail-

ing his Outbound 46, Pineapple, in Mexico, said

of modern helm-stations, “Folks seem to want a

command center, with lots of fancy knobs and

buttons and screens. But the reality of short-

handed cruising is that you’re almost never at

the helm. h e autopilot is driving, and you’re

doing something else.”

Enter the iPad. On Isbjörn, since we’re

almost always six crew onboard, we assign

a dedicated navigator who’s in charge of the

iPad, kept in a waterproof LifeProof “Nuud”

case, in the cockpit. Another crew is at the

helm and focuses on sailing/steering the boat.

h e navigator can stand beside or behind the

helmsperson, who has immediate access to the

chartplotting sot ware on the iPad.

If you’re shorthanded, like in Pineapple’s

case, a simple, removable ROKK mount at

PHOTOS COURTESY OF

ANDY SCHELL AND MIA KARLSSON

ON DECK NAVIGATION

The iPad at the nav station can

be taken on deck if necessary

Isbjörn was fi tted out

with simplicity in mind