Finally I have some time to write this blog post: So on one of my deliveries I met Andy and he’s a real fan of OpenCPN. I didn’t get it at the time as I had tried it in the past and it was very buggy and basically unusable.
On that delivery my perspective changed as I got to work with OpenCPN while it actually functioned properly without crashing.
I decided to get myself a proper GPS receiver for my MacBook Air and install OpenCPN. After installing some plugins buying charts, and running some tests I got it to work stable and used it on my Greek and Croatian adventures to do all navigation and route tracking.
Obviously the display of chart detail changes with zoom level, but I found it very easy to work with and all the route planning and tracking worked like a charm. I’m using O-Charts bought new and downloaded directly to my MacBook. It all works great and I didn’t find any issues with the charts. Everything was there.
So in comparison to my iPad Navigation post: The benefits of OpenCPN are clear. A bigger screen, able to plan and track using a mouse and a whole host of other features I didn’t discuss yet in this post. Thats a story for when I’m back on BAIA (soon!) There are some drawbacks too. The obvious one is that the laptop stays on the nav table. An iPad or iPhone can come outside and act as a plotter at the helm. I wouldn’t do that with my MacBook. Second and the biggest challenge is power.
The MacBook needs more power than an iPad, so I had various options. I brought a 100watt USB-C power adapter with a cigarette plug. Which is quite common on boats and worked most of the time. On another boat I used the small 150watt inverter mounted at the nav table to run the laptop as there was a cigarette plug but the connection was bad so it popped out.
BAIA doesn’t even have a cigarette plug anymore so I’ll need to come up with another solution if I want to use it there. Although it’s not needed as I have nice Raymarine plotters inside and outside. I want to do some tests with the onboard systems data. Let’s see if I can get NMEA2000 data into OpenCPN. That would be nice. So a follow up blog post on OpenCPN will come.