Navigation & Weather

I thought I would share a bit about our navigation setup. "EraOra" is equipped with a an older Garmin GPS, which is perfect for fast GPS positioning or showing the actual route on the electronic compass while sailing but the maps on this device are to old and routing is cumbersome.
I always wanted to equip the boat with Wi-Fi and after a bit of research I chose a Huawei mobile hotspot, it's easy to setup with a sim card of a local phone company, up to 5 devices on board can access the Internet simultaneously, the battery lasts up to 5 hours and charging works with via USB or with a 12V adapter.
For the navigation itself I use an iPad 2 with the Navionics app, this turned out to be a perfect combination, the nautical maps are detailed and always updated, routing, setting waypoints and tracking is easy and the touch screen combined with the long battery life of the iPad 2 are a perfect fit. l also got a waterproof bag from Aquapac which at the end was never used as the old GPS on the helm was there too. Second most important were the weather information, I wanted to get the actual GRIB files and view the different weather models including the wave height, after playing around with different programs on my MacBook I started to use the apps Weathertrack and Weather4D on the iPad and I have to say they are great for every sailor, both apps allow me to get detailed last minute weather information just by selecting an area on the virtual map, for the local weather we referred to various Internet sites. If you have more questions don't be shy and contact me.