Both Admiralty and Imray have transferred chart folios on to CD, with simple software included to help sailors find their way into electronic navigation. Now Imray has taken one step further, producing its East Coast Pilot in digital format.
This makes a lot of sense. Once you go electronic, traditional boundaries between charts and books become irrelevant, and you can put a lot of additional information in hidden layers on an electronic chart, to be called up as required.
When you open the screen, at first glance the digital pilot looks exactly like the Imray digital chart pack. But then you find new icons on the charts which when clicked on open up additional information boxes. These include notes on approaches to ports and rivers, hazard warnings, route information, and best of all, photographs taken from the water, which show you approach landmarks to look out for.
There are also 'rolling road' diagrams, just as there are in the print version of the East Coast Pilot, but these seem a little pointless. Useful, perhaps, on the printed page, they just seem confusing when they appear on the chart, possibly blocking out the very buoys they refer to. (In fact the windows “float” so that they can be moved out of the way). Why not a dotted line, say, which could pop-up on the chart in the same way, but showing the actual line of approach?
There's a shortage of tidal information too - the main area in which the Admiralty chart folios score over the Imray equivalents. But then, that's reflected in the price: the Admiralty chart plotter folios are £49.95 each and the Imray digital chart packs £27.50.
This Imray Digital Pilot is priced at £55, which seems reasonable in that context, bearing in mind the large amount of additional information it contains.
It's easy to use, both on its own for passage planning, and interfaced with a GPS as a chart plotter in a PC on board. A panel on the left of the screen provides vessel and route data, but it's in fairly small type - difficult for the navigator to read from any distance or with wet glasses! You can hide the panel to get more of the chart on screen when route planning.
There is a detailed help menu, too, but it's hardly needed. It only takes a few minutes' “playing” with the more-or-less self-explanatory buttons to work out how to insert waypoints and create a route, and to access all the pilotage information along the way.
The Digital Pilot has a suggested life of two years (as against one for the Admiralty packages) and both chart corrections and pilotage updates are available to download. (You can go on using it after the corrections expire, but of course the information will become degraded over time, just as with paper charts and pilot books).
Corrections cannot be placed directly on to the charts, as they can with paper charts, but it is possible to tag reference points on the chart, showing that a change has been noted. Changes can be stored in Word files, which the tag acts as a prompt to consult.
When using the digital pilot as a plotter, you can choose to have the information windows pop up automatically as your vessel approaches them, but approaching an unfamiliar port it would probably be more appropriate to have the printed pilot on deck, in the old fashioned way, than to be down below looking at hazard warnings on screen.
Imray intends that the East Coast Digital Pilot will be the first of a series covering all the popular cruising grounds already covered by their digital chart folios and printed pilot books.
The two-year correction cycle makes this software reasonable value for money, and no doubt more and more context sensitive information will be included in future editions as the idea is refined. But just as with charts, it's not time to throw away the printed version yet!
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The Imray East Coast Digital Pilot is packed with useful features including more detailed chart coverage than the Imray digital chart folio for the same area. It can be used as a basic chart plotter, but it really comes into its own for passage planning, and doing your “homework” before setting out. The photographs are great. But there is scope for refinement in the way some of the other information is displayed.
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For more information visit www.imray.com
