EXPLORER CHARTS MACENC SERIES

Here in the South Pacific, it can be more dangerous to rely on GPS chart plotters or tablets when the islands are often very far out of their charted positions. The GPS is quite accurate - it’s the charts that aren’t. Some people erroneously call this a problem with GPS. But most of those times, it wasn’t a big deal because I had clear visuals of the area around me, and I didn’t need to follow the charts. When I took my own boat Talespinner up and down the ICW in 2011-2012, I certainly had fun taking iPad screen shots of the times the charts showed me driving my boat across land.

Sailing out here in the Pacific has given me a new perspective on what might be my favorite app. I’ve often blogged about my favorite iPad apps for navigation that make use of the built-in GPS on the iPad. Times certainly have changed, but I can see how that book had lots to do with my fascination with this technology. That book dealt with GPS and it was written in 2006.

EXPLORER CHARTS MACENC SERIES

These past few days I have been rereading my own novel Wreckers’ Key, the 4th in the Seychelle series as part of the research I’m doing for the writing of the 5th in that series. We were actually where the purple pin is, but the app showed us to be located on the opposite side of the island. This shows how the charted islands were about half a mile off of their actual position.

Explorer charts macenc