When cruising on Questeria, we like to have a route on our chartplotter. This makes for a less stressful day. When cruising for several days, we plan the routes ahead of time and organize them using Google Sheets. We use a number of tools in the process, some of which I created myself. Below is a snapshot of a spreadsheet with our routes.
This spreadsheet contains seven routes, each on its own sheet. Each sheet contains waypoints, latitudes, longitudes, distances, bearings, durations and times. I will explain how I did this in this series of posts.
In this post I give an overview of the route planning process. In future posts, I’ll talk about route planning tools we use before our cruise:
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Initial Planning Intentions
When we start planning a multi-day cruise , we know our starting and ending points, but we might not know all the places we want to stop along the way. We might have some favorite anchorages or marinas along the way, or maybe a new place we want to explore. At this stage of planning, we think about how long we want to travel in one day. Travel time depends on boat speed and distance, but can vary greatly by current, wind and other factors. We also consider delays waiting for things like bridge openings. Weather is a big unknown. We have left an anchorage at the crack of dawn, and had to stop and wait for fog to clear. Then there’s Murphy’s Law — Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. With boating, you can never plan your trip exactly. We make intentions instead of plans.
From experience, we have found that leaving the dock can be the hardest part of the trip. There is always “one more thing” we forgot about. So, the first day we don’t plan to travel very far. After that, we get into a routine, and plan for longer days. We look at sunrise and sunset times on our chartplotter to take advantage of daylight hours. At the start of the day, we have a rough idea of where we want to stop, but we won’t decide until later, based on our progress during the day.
We learned early on, that our plans must be very flexible. It usually takes longer to get from point A to point B, than we think it will. The set of routes we make ahead of time are outdated by the first day of the cruise, but they are still useful.
I do our initial route planning on Windows. A few years ago, I transitioned from a laptop PC to a Windows tablet, with a docking station, mouse and portable keyboard. I find that this works best for my lifestyle. I could do planning on a Android or iOS tablet, but I have an easier time with a two-button mouse.
Route Planning Tools
My preferred tool for planning a route is OpenCPN. My second choice is Garmin’s HomePort, but I use them both. I prefer the user-interface of OpenCPN and I prefer the the look of HomePort, but that is mostly personal preference. I can import/export routes between OpenCPN and HomePort, but I must use HomePort to load the routes on my 4208 Garmin chartplotter.
When we first started cruising we bought a lot of cruising guides, like Managing the Waterway and Skipper Bob books. Now, we use ActiveCaptain. ActiveCaptain is a crowd-sourced database of navigational hazards, anchorages, marinas and more. It is essentially a cruising guide, written by cruisers, that is always up to date.
ChartPlotter
We have a Garmin 4208 chartplotter that we bought in 2006. It is now discontinued, but we are not ready to upgrade. It doesn’t have a fancy touch screen or WiFi, but it works just fine for us. It uses an SD card to transfer data to and from the computer.
Route Planning Process
We might cruise to get from one place to another, like our trip to Moore Haven, FL, or, like our trip to the Bahamas , we might just want to experience a place and come back home. Either way, we determine how long we want to take, and decide on places we might want to stop on the way.
Waypoints
First, we create waypoints for our cruise. We use ActiveCaptain to look for anchorages and marinas. Then, we use OpenCPN and HomePort to create waypoints for the places we found in ActiveCaptain.
Routes
For me, creating a route is an iterative process. First, I create a simple route, with a few waypoints. Then I zoom in and add, move or extend waypoints. I keep zooming in and modifying the route until I am happy with it. I export and import it between tools and look at it on different charts.
GPX Tools
When I am happy with all my routes I clean it up with the Clean Route tool, so it looks the same on OpenCPN, HomePort, my chartplotter, and ActiveCaptain. Then I create a Comma Separated Values, CSV, file that can be copied to a spreadsheet.
Chartplotter
The last step is to put all the routes and waypoints on our Garmin 4208 chartplotter. I also import them to a mobile device running the ActiveCaptain app. We are now ready to cruise.
Next
In the next post of this series I will talk in detail about HomePort. Then, in future posts I’ll talk about ActiveCaptain, GPX tools and putting it all together with an example.