Need Software + Hardware solution for ocean cruises

My wife and I like to cruise, and I do business enroute on a Windows Vista laptop. We always have a balcony room, so plenty of sky is in view.

I'm looking for the most cost-effective software + hardware combination to help plot the ship's course and position, and to provide information on islands, ports, etc.

For example, our next cruise is this coming November. It starts in Barcelona, exits the Med past Gibraltar, travels up the coast and then seaward to the Azores, across to Bermuda, then down to Miami. It would be great !! if we could follow such trips on a laptop.

We're mostly GPS-ignorant, though there's good GPS in my car and I have a portable MIO C310x for rental cars, and can make both work well.

So --- is there a way to make the MIO do the job I have in mind? What do I need to buy?

In any case, we'll need handholding.

Thanks to the gurus...
Good luck to the sitemaster - this looks perfect for my situation.

Hi notaguru,

Welcome to the forum.

Fugawi ( www.fugawi.com ) specializes on maps for lakes, rivers, and oceans. The Fugawi Marine ENC Ver. 4.5 GPS navigation software could be what you are after: http://www.fugawi.com/web/products/f...marine_enc.htm , but also check other Fugawi's products on their website.

The above is about US $210 for just the software, though. A GPS receiver would be another around $60 - depending on which one you buy.

You could also just try perhaps the least expensive solution - Microsoft Streets & Trips. The program is not designed for such purpose (it is a trip planner for USA/Canada), but it does include the whole world. You would be able to view your position on the map no matter where you are. It only depends how much detail you require. MS Streets & Trips will not zoom in very much outside USA/Canada. The maximum detail you could hope fore is shown on the screenshot bellow:


If the above detail would satisfy your needs, then Streets & Trips can be purchased for less then US $40, or you can get the version which comes with the GPS unit for less than $100.

Thanks, Marvin.

That sounds like a good prescription. I've written to Fugawi for specifics.

One potential issue is my OS - Vista...

Good luck with it! Let us know what you end up buying/using. After your cruise, if you feel like it, you could write about your experiences with it. I'm sure it would make for very interesting reading.

Another possibility is Google Earth Plus (a step up from the free version). It will do real-time tracking of GPS data. See Using GPS Devices with Google Earth- Google Earth User Guide which is the user guide for Google Earth. Of course, you need either a live Internet connection to download the actual images (impractical on the cruise ship), or you can download them in advance and use the buffered images already stored on your hard disk.

In your case, before departure, you should be able to use Google Earth to view the places the cruise will visit. Just set your disk cache to be as large as you can. When you are looking at each area in Google Earth, zoom in as close as possible and let the full data set download (the bar should show 100%.) Be sure you cover the entire island or surrounding area along with the ocean track in between. Then, when you are on the cruise, hook-up the GPS receiver and track where the ship is in real-time. You could even take the laptop and GPSr with you on shore excursions.

This would be a fairly inexpensive solution, considering that Google Earth Plus costs only $20! See Google Earth .

I personally had the same problem. It was extremely difficult to find a GPS unit/laptop combination that I could bring with me on my cruise that had everything in one unit. I ended up buying a Garmin Outdoor GPS and World Map v4. I loaded it up with the whole world map and started it up to see where I was in the water by zooming out, the speed of the ship, the direction...when I was off the boat in the Caribbean it had "major roads", but that was about it.

It was tiny and easy to throw into a bag, when I got home...I could load off the track data onto the computer and view it on the Mapsource software (not the nicest graphics, but it works).

Flaws: Slightly over priced and lacking the newer GPS chipsets like in car gps systems, so it easily loses gps signal and takes an EON to lock on.

Also ensure the unit you buy can support World Map v4 (Garmin.com has a compatibility list) and there is enough MEMORY IN THE UNIT. Also, don't buy a car unit, you can't install World Map or most hiking type maps on it.

Just my 2 cents instead of lugging a laptop around.

Where would this map data be stored on your drive? How can you ensure it does not get wiped so you can build up a map over time of the areas of interest?
Thanks.

Google Earth (GE) does it automagically. The user can set the size of data that is cached. Clearly GE builds a file somewhere, up to the maximum the user specifies. I don't know for sure, but I would expect that the oldest data is overwritten when the cache fills. The max disk cache size is 2000 MB (or 2 GB). How much geography that includes is clearly a function of how closely you zoom in and how dense the data is in your area of interest. We have found the geographical coverage to be fairly significant. You are right, though, that you would have no guarantee that you can cover the full area of interest in 2 GB.

For the cruise data (which the OP needed), he could fairly easily download the areas of interest at some low resolution and see if he had enough coverage. He could then do the same thing at higher resolution and repeat until his disk cache wrapped around

Try it - if you work out what file(s) GE is writing, perhaps you can save them separately and that way generate a replica of the entire GE database (many Terabytes!)

I never used it myself, but recently I heard a user recommending to someone GemGlobal for the same purpose. I read the description of the software, and it does look interesting.

If someone gives it a try, please come back to give us feedback on it.