Poor Man's Chartplotter install
 

So, since I have been enjoying my 1972 Seafari on a budget due to having one son in college, and one son in grad school, the traditional chartplotter system will have to wait. In the meantime, I have been using a handheld Samsung Galaxy Tablet with Navionics app as my main navigation system. I do have a Garmin GPS too, but the screen is too darn small for me to use comfortably with my 50 plus year old eyes.

I realized I had a blank space on the dash perfectly sized for the tablet, but could not find a tablet holder bracket that fit close to the dash. So with some 3M 4200 and some wide velcro, voila'!

Looks great to me. Whatever works.

I'm okay with that, looks good.

Probably a real stupid question but how does the tablet get a GPS signal other than cell towers?

Ah, not a stupid question at all. Cell reception in my area of NJ is good offshore to about 15 miles + or -, and I do coastal boating primarily, so if I ventured out past cell reception, then I would use the Garmin GPS. You can't see it in the photos, but I have a mount for the Garmin above and to the left of the tablet on the dash. The GPS in the tablet does work without a cell phone contract, so I did not add the tablet to my cell phone subscription with my (Verizon) carrier. So it might work farther offshore, but I can't tell for sure, as I have not tested its range yet.

did that for a long time with an ipad with a lifeproof case and worked great. Ram Mount makes a cradle for most tablets and can be mounted with hardware or heavy duty suction cup.

The Samsung has a built in GPS receiver. It does not require cell connection as long as the maps have been downloaded. I use mine 25+ miles out. I prefer it to any plotter I've seen.

Perry’s app was great even without the updated subscription. I ran both Bahamas trips with my older Garmin with a g2 chip plus Navionics app ($20 subscription)with the GPS chip in my iPhone with no cell coverage, and downloaded map. I sure hope Garmin allows the Navionics routes and waypoints to transfer to their chart plotters. I’m going Simrad on the next upgrade if not.

Navionics added a GPX download capability. I transferred all my waypoints and routes to Garmins Active Captian app. From there I expect to be able to upload to my plotter.

Are the kids working for the summer? You need to ask for some gas money for the boat.

Part II

Gas money!
 

Ha, Vezo.

Well, the oldest is paying off $50,000 in student loans and is married, the middle guy just graduated with $60,000 of loans but is continuing grad school for one more year while he works as a computer programmer/systems engineer, and the youngest is in civil engineering school at Stevens with 4 more years to go. Between them they are doing fine, and paying their loans, but until that all goes away, there are no $2500 chartplotters in my future. $100 tablet and $20 Navionics app will have to do me. Luckily I can still afford to fill up my 35 gallon tank!

You can get GPS receiver gadget called Bad Elf that plugs into the charging port on an iPad, so you don’t need a cellular-capable tablet. It comes with a cord that lets you charge the tablet while using it. It picks up the Russian Glonass satellites in addition to the US & euro ones, so I typically pick up about 19 of 21 satellites that provides a positional accuracy of about 6’! When you combine that with the 1’ contours in the Navionics Sonar maps, I’ve found that the iPad/Navionics combo is a very accurate system. It’s allowed me to run my trawler with a draft of almost 5’ over 2000 miles through some pretty thin water with no problems! Although I have 2 chart plotters on the boat, they’re just backups for my iPad Pro that I’ve used for the entire trip! There have been several boats that went aground and had prop damage in one section of the Rideau canal in Canada recently because some buoys were in the wrong place, but someone recently posted on the Great Loop forum that if you had the latest Navionics Sonar charts, it showed the deep water well enough that you could navigate that area despite the mis-located buoys.

I attended a briefing on mapping software at the Great Loop Rendezvous in Norfolk in May presented by an editor from Waterway Guide. He said that the big GPS makers like Garmin and Raymarine are running scared because of the competition from tablets with mapping applications like Navionics and Aqua Maps which are not only much cheaper, but also more up-to-date and more accurate! The $400 Garmin charts are 6 months old when you buy them, while Navionics updates their sonar charts every couple of weeks, and their charts also include input from Waterway Guide on anchorages and marinas! However Garmin has bought Navionics, so it remains to be seen if they will start using it for their own chips or screw it up like they did to the Active Captain program used by many cruisers that they also bought a year or two ago!

Very Good To Hear!!! That fuel gauge is looking pretty sad. Growing up on Barnegat Bay we were portioned 12 gallons and one quart of two stroke oil/day. Good times!

Michael.

Love the fuel allowance idea!

And, the fuel gauge is at zero because the batteries were off. Not that it is that accurate - it reads 1/4 when I am still over half full!

When I first got my Seafari back in 1975 (in the days of 50:1 premix, way before oil injection!), I removed the fuel tank, cleaned it and coated it with epoxy after repairing a corrosion spot where the bare tank was sitting on top of a brass 10-32 nut that someone had evidently dropped in the boat before the fuel tank was installed!

After reinstalling the empty tank, I leveled the boat, made sure the battery was fully charged, and placed a piece of white tape across the top and bottom of the gas gage. I then filled it in 6 gallon increments, marking the tape where the needle was after each 6 gallons. It was accurate enough that when buying gas at marinas on subsequent Bahama trips, I was able to predict how much fuel it would take within a couple of gallons. This was pretty handy when you had to add a pint of oil to every 6 gallons! I would just fill the tank in 6 gallon increments until it was nearly full and then use 6 gallon jugs to top it off so I always had the right oil mixture.

Update on the 3M 4200 adhesive on the velcro strips method: It failed at adhering to the rubber of the tablet case. Only got the two seasons out of it before the velcro came loose from the tablet case..

Going to have to find a tablet attachment bracket that fits the Samsung. But the concept has been sound and works quite well. The Navionics app records speed, distance, track covered and is quite easy to use.