Initially we had planned to use Admiralty Charts, simply because of a preference for these. However, after building an Admiralty chart list (and working out the likely cost) we also looked at the Imray option which we concluded was the better choice involving far fewer charts each of which was perfectly adequate given the nature of the trip and the harbour chartlets / other information they contain. Overall we took 28 Imray charts and two Admiralty Leisure Folios.
Although we had been through the detail of the charts against our planned route, we also had the added comfort of Navionics electronic charts for chart plotter / PC covering the whole of the UK.
The choice worked well.
We looked at securing our chosen charts second hand and checked out used chart vendors and also watched EBay for several months. However, after a bit more diligence and exploring the online discount bookstores we discovered that the latest editions could be bought new for not much more that the used and often out of date versions. The best website that we found is www.bookbrain.co.uk.
The boat has a Geonav 4 Gypsy handheld plotter with mounts at both the wheel and chart table. It has Navionics Platinum charts covering the whole of the UK and has the added benefit of doubling as the satnav for the car!
Given the size of the handheld plotter's screen (9cm) we use a PC to input waypoint and routes, transferring the waypoints to the main GPS while cross checking the BTW and DTW to verify data entry. Although a bit of a pain it doesn't take long to do.
Having the PC Plotter also provided a backup to access the electronic charts when the handheld developed a fault a week or so before the end of the trip.
The combined information in Reeds and on the reverse of the Imray charts provided about as much detail as is available. We found it frustrating on some passages that this information just wasn't sufficient to calculate a CTS with any great accuracy given the significant changes in tidal streams we experienced over fairly short distances.
Before setting off we cut out the tidal stream pages covering the UK coastline from last year's almanac and laminated them. Using a chinograph pencil to add times to each hour of data these were updated for the passage ahead and stuck up next to the chart table. As well as the main tidal stream pages there's very useful tidal detail on a number of the key headlands and passages. To aid the updating process we also kept the Dover Tide Tables up by the chart table (for consistency we tried to work with Dover data whenever possible).
One of the failings of our handheld plotter is that saved tracks are not in a well recognised format. As we were keen to have a GPS log of the trip, we took along an old Garmin Forerunner that was used for running which stores tracks in a format that can be exported to Google Earth. It had the added benefit of providing a further GPS backup.
As with the charts, after checking relative prices these were bought new. Some proved to be more useful than others. The Royal Northumberland Yacht Club's publication covering the Humber to Rattray Head was a firm favourite and The Shell Channel Pilot was the most disappointing primarily because of the scant passage detail. For this passage information Reeds Almanac was the surprising star and was hard to beat.
Pilots taken;
1. | The Yachtsman's Pilot; Clyde to Colonsay Imray |
2. | Clyde Cruising Club Sailing Directions; The Firth of Clyde (incl. IOM) |
3. | Clyde Cruising Club Sailing Directions; Kintyre to Ardnamurchan |
4. | The Yachtsman's Pilot; Isle of Mull and Adjacent Coasts Imray |
5. | The Yachtsman's Pilot; Skye and Northwest Scotland Imray |
6. | The Yachtsman's Pilot; The Western Isles Imray (not used) |
7. | The Yachtsman's Pilot; North and East Scotland Imray |
8. | RNYC Sailing Directions; Humber to Rattray Head |
9. | Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Humber Imray |
10. | East Coast Pilot Lowestoft to Ramsgate Imray |
11. | Tom Cunliffe The Shell Channel Pilot |
12. | Lundy and the Irish Sea Pilot Imray |
13. | Irish Cruising Club; East & North Coasts of Ireland (not used) |
Keen to stay in touch with the outside world particularly for weather forecasts but also to ensure that bills were paid mobile broadband proved crucial. Although there were a number of potential suppliers the only one that provided us with anything like the coverage that we required was Vodaphone. Coverage was so good that the only port we struggled to get a signal in was Eyemouth. We used the Met Office and www.grib.us sites most frequently for our weather information.
We took out a Marinecall subscription for the duration of our trip, however after using it initially we found that the additional detail provided over and above the standard Met Office data was pretty unreliable. By the end of the trip we were only using Marinecall very occasionally for synoptic charts.
Although we found that the key weather forecasts were only received intermittently the Navtex did provide us with information at some important times particularly during the frequent Coastguard strikes.