Friday, May 28, 2010

Navionics and the iPad

Oh my golly goshes....

Today showed shocking lack of self control. There was a PC World between my train station and home - ok, not exactly, but only a little way off - and found myself walking in and.....oh wow, what a co-incidence.... its the UK iPad launch date. And what's this email just received this afternoon? Navionics charts available for iPad?

Yup, I now am what can only be described as playing with my new toy.

Full review to come, but it looks gorgeous.

5 comments:

Tillerman said...

Pad? Pod? I'm confused,

JP said...

Ok, so a bit over excited!

Bursledon Blogger said...

However did we manage to navigate the Hurst narrows without one all these years - we must have been mad :O)

JP said...

I get the feeling that one whiff of sea air and the iPad would collapse in shock.

It's a bit like the chart equivalent of a coffee table book - lovely to look at, but not sure people actually read them.

As Navionics said, their charts are more social tools than navigational tools (alas). They envisage people chatting about where they will go or where they did go (complete with photos) rather than doing course to waypoints at 2am mid channel.

Rockfixer said...

I've been using the iPad for repeatedly navigating through the Finnish archipelago from Helsinki to Turku, which is a 110+ nm voyage, passing thousands of islands, not to mention all the shallows, rocks and reefs. No tidal waves, but the largest archipelago in the world. A place where the british navy did not do too well a couple of hundred years ago. We are talking complex navigating.
Day and night. No problem, except the iPad does not like it too hot (don't leave it lying flat on a surface ini the sun, or it may ask you to cool it down).
More of a social tool??? What a load of... Well, Navionics WOULD say that, as they want people to pay the much higher price of their ordinary gps maps. It's fully functional and works like a charm.
Just see to that you have a charger (as the gps is pretty hungry for power) and cover it with some kind of cover to keep it from getting wet, and I believe you will like what you are getting for that price