NAVIGATION SOFTWARE

Free Navigation Software from the Internet

General Programmes

Propellor Calculator

This excellent Freeeware programme from Surfbaud runs on MS Excel spreadsheets and allows you to calculate the optimum size propellor for your boat. You input the engine horsepower, RPM, gear ratio, boat length and weight and the programme calculates the optimum diameter and pitch for a two or three bladed prop.

Download file propcalc.xls (30K)

Navigation Programmes

Vancouver has lots of useful information on GPS mapping software. One of the best I have tried is:

Navigate-GPS

This excellent Shareware programme allows you to display your own scanned charts and superimpose your route, your track and your current position. As you progress along your route, Navigate-GPS constantly updates and displays navigation information such as the bearing, distance and time to the next waypoint; your current course and speed; and your distance off-course. As you move off a chart, Navigate-GPS automatically switches charts for you.

Download file navigate.zip (200K) from Mouland software

Conneting the GPS will probably cause most problems - you will need a suitable connecting cable to connect the GPS NMEA port to the PC serial port. Once this has been cracked, the GPS current position and track will show as a dotted line on the chart.

GPS Utility

Free software for editing and entering waypoints and other GPS information - see GPSU Website at: GPS Utility

Free Charts

Free charts - European waters and details of marinas. Spanish site but plenty of detail in English - see UCINA Website at: UCINA

Free Electronic Charts

If you have got a flatbed scanner or know someone who can do it for you, you can scan a paper chart and use this in the Navigate-GPS programme. It is quite easy to do by scanning sections and stitching them together using PaintShopPro - another excellent piece of Shareware. It works best on charts up to half admiralty size which is about 28" x 21" or A1. You will need quite a lot of RAM as an A1 chart takes up about 6 Megabites of memory in bitmap format if you keep to 1:1 scale It will work quite well if you scan 8 A4 sections which each take about 700 Kilobites and use the software automatically to switch between sections.

You can also scan chart inserts at a different scale and it will automatically switch to the larger scale. You must register each chart or section of a chart by inputting the lat and long of three separate points - so it is not necessary to be 100% accurate with the chart positioning on the scanner.

Scanning and Stitching

This needs a bit of patience but is quite easy to do - for a full explanation see: Chart Scanning Techniques

Tidal Prediction Programmes

These are based on harmonic constants supplied by various international sources and are thus subject to some inaccuracies but they should be good enough for passage planning etc. One problem I have fould on some of these is confusion regarding time zones and adjustments for daylight saving time etc. so you have to check this carefully.

Tide 2.4

This is a simple DOS programme and covers the world including the Med!. The coverage for UK and France is good and ties in well with Macmillan with unambiguous time zones. It gives HW and LW times on a daily basis or for a selected period - also displays graphically and shows moon phases. Not very pretty but it works well.

Download file Tide24.zip (315K) from Vancouver

WXTide 32

This is a more comprehensive windows tide and current prediction programme with worldwide coverage including 44 stations in UK and Ireland.

Download file WXTide40.zip (1.6M) from Simtel

Southern North Sea Tides

Southern North Sea ports are covered by a very neat FREE tidal prediction software produced by the Dutch Hydrographic Office (based on the UK Hydrographic Office tidal data). It gives predicted tidal streams and directions for the S. North Sea area tidal diamonds, times of HW, LW and the tidal curves for ports from Niewpoort in Belgium through the Netherlands up to Sylt in N Germany, plus some other useful stuff

Download File HP33D NL Tides from the Royal Netherlands Navy Hydrographic Office

Solent Waypoints

By courtesy of Cowes Online and Winning Tides, you can download the waypoints for 140 of the Solent's Principal Geographical Points, Navigation Buoys and Racing Marks - including all the new names of renamed buoys.

Download file solentwaypoints.zip (39K)

Time

As John Harrison discovered, precice timekeeping is the key to accurate navigatiion. PC clocks vary in thier accuracy and may give errors if being used for navigation. Here is a useful programme called Tardis that will automatically adjust your PC internal clock every time you go on-line.

Download file tardis2000.zip (1.06M) from H C Mingham-Smith Ltd