October 23, 2012 06:54
This is a newbie question, but I'd appreciate all advice. I'm delivering a Beneteau 49 from the Northeast U.S. to the Caribbean. I'm old school, started doing this 40 years ago when the big new technological innovation was RDF, and used to do it with paper charts, compass and watch. So for the past few years Chartplotters have been state of the art for me, but have decided it's time to come out of the dark ages and learn/use plotting software, etc. I have a MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion, with BootCamp if I need to run software from the evil empire. I've purchased and played around with MacENC, but that's it. The boat will have an Iridium Sat phone, but no single sideband. Looking for recommendations for the best setup: do I need GPSNavX and the external GPS? Can MacENC be used offshore? (The charts I have for it now don't go to Bermuda or the Caribbean.) Is there a way to get weather and Gulf Stream info into the Mac while at sea through the Iridium phone? Is there better routing software that would calculate the fastest route given wind and current predictions, as you would use in a race like Newport-Bermuda? So many questions... Hoping to make this a learning experience. Thanks!