Chris Goes Sailing

How will you keep in touch?

When I was very small we would send picture postcards from our travels. It was expected. Nobody expected to have to call somebody on holiday. Then when granny got a telephone we were expected to ring home occasionally. In the late 1960 when Chichester, Rose and Knox Johnson sailed round the world it was quite usual for sailors to be out of contact for weeks and months at a time. But the world has changed. Mobile phone coverage around the British coast and a few miles out to sea has been almost comprehensive for a decade or two. On land there is no escape, we are expected to be contactable 24/7/365 (unless we are driving) and we are far more likely to be carrying a mobile phone than a pen.

“Will you be keeping a TwitterFaceInsta feed”? “No, I don’t do TwitterFaceInsta, but I could post on the blog occasionally”. “OK how you goin to do that”? “Laptop”, But the work laptop is locked down and only to be used for work related activities. My IPad which achieved built in obsolescence a few years ago still does most of the things I want it to do but Apps randomly stop upgrading then refusing to work. Not a good place to be if a navigation App stops working mid passage. Then I checked over my laptop, one of my daughter’s school cast offs, at least 15 years old running Windows 7 and struggling with any software requiring over a few megabites of RAM, battery good for about 15-20 minutes. OK it is time for an upgrade.

So what do I want the “new” laptop to be able to do? Chrome, get E mails, access WordPress, basic MS Office, Zoom / MS Teams, Passage planning chart plotter: Open CPN and other navigation and weather software… So min 4gb RAM, a camera, BlueTooth to connect to my GPS dongle, WiFi to connect to the boat’s NMEA network and to the worldwide web. Rugged. Rugged? How rugged? Rugged enough to stand being bounced around in a small boat in a salt laden environment for months. Hopefully it does not need to be rugged enough to stop an AK47 bullet. So a “semi rugged” Tough Book? OK but arn’t they very expensive? When new yes, but what about reconditioned?

Enter the amazing customer service of Steve Davis and London Chart Plotters www.londonchartplotters.com . For many years I have used Visit My Harbour’s raster charts first with Sea Clear software on CD Rom then VMH’s Chart Sticks and “unified charts on a secure memory stick, with OpenCPN. https://www.visitmyharbour.com/ Over the years there have been links to London Chart Plotters offerings, reconditioned tough books and various android tablets. Well thought out accessories at remarkably competitive prices. Clearly curated by somebody who knows the environment his customers want their kit to work in without being beholden to the myth that anything to do with boats has to be at premium +++ price.

My first purchase was a multi charger for the work laptop which can take 12vDC, 110 or 240vAC input and produce a smoothed, stabalised output between 12 and 20vDC. Next I dropped Steve an E mail asking about his toughbooks. Reviewing what I was looking for, Steve recommended a Tough Book CF-C1 running Windows 10 with 4gb RAM (easily upgraded to 8gb if necessary), SD card slot, Blue tooth, Camera and touch screen, preloaded with Open CPN, 2022 UK chart set, a world chart set and a host of other navigation software. This machine has the added advantage that the screen can be rotated and laid flat to make a tablet computer, easy to mount on the bulkhead above the chart table. With a WiFi link to the on board NMEA 2000 network there was no need for the GPS and AIS plug-in modules that Steve usually adds to the package. I did add the 2022 Antares Charts for Scotland’s west coast. All this including multi-charger, wireless mouse and case for very little more than the annual licence to upgrade the Navionics charts in the MFD.

As it worked out the Toughbook was mainly used as a personal laptop and for Passage Planning, I also kept the fair log electronically on it. The IPad with Navionics, Imray Tides and various weather apps proved a reliable navigation tool particularly after the Chart Plotter failed. Duplicating the Apps on the I Phone gave yet another back up that could be updated wherever I had 4G Mobile signal. Paper charts, navigation notes and the deck log lived on the chart table throughout.

For general communications the Mobile for phone and with a couple of WhatsApp groups did much of the work.