Active Captain and Garmin Blue Chart

Looking for some help to make more useful....

Using Routes, is there a way to get cumulative distances, and/or better yet an ETA based on SOG?

Delete Icons that have no value, like stuff on land.

And, just turn stuff icons all together for easier searches. I’ve got nothing selected in Garmin or Active Captain (search tool/Gear) …. ALL OFF, and I still get way to many icons, boat ramps, roads, airports. Makes searching for specifics impossible. Like selecting only Diesel (or any other parameter) you just can’t find it because it’s cluttered and have to check every marina.

Thx

I use Active Captain in conjunction with Garmin Blue Charts. I can turn off a lot of the detail by going to Garmin Blue Charts: settings, Chart Options and then selecting a level of detail.

To get total miles, I build a route and the the total is displayed. If you give the system an average cruise speed, it will compute your travel time.

Gordon

We use Active Captain totally independent of our plotter, do not integrate. For us, the plotter is for routing and navigating and Active Captain is for looking at potential locations, marinas, anchorages etc. It's more a high level planning but not used for detailed work.

Gordon J said:

I use Active Captain in conjunction with Garmin Blue Charts. I can turn off a lot of the detail by going to Garmin Blue Charts: settings, Chart Options and then selecting a level of detail.

To get total miles, I build a route and the the total is displayed. If you give the system an average cruise speed, it will compute your travel time.

Gordon

Click to expand...

Gordon,

I've got everything shut off, Garmin, gear on left with least detail and gear on the right, everything clicked off and still have a ton of wpts.

It's a great program, but like to work the best out of it.

BandB said:

We use Active Captain totally independent of our plotter, do not integrate. For us, the plotter is for routing and navigating and Active Captain is for looking at potential locations, marinas, anchorages etc. It's more a high level planning but not used for detailed work.

Click to expand...

BandB,
That's exactly what I do, but with my new boat until I get some decent electronics it will be a close back up for the ancient C80s.

However, it's a great planning tool, but awkward if searching for specific items, like Garmin has on the Blue Chart. Marines with diesel is one search I made and the only box I clicked for any wpts on the screen and still have a LOT of misc wpt that I'd like to get rid of like anchorages, rivers, bridges etc that get in the way of a search. Any idea?

I assume when you say detailed work, you're referring to nav details to operate the boat within, not where a marina is. Would make sense.

Seevee said:

BandB,

That's exactly what I do, but with my new boat until I get some decent electronics it will be a close back up for the ancient C80s.



However, it's a great planning tool, but awkward if searching for specific items, like Garmin has on the Blue Chart. Marines with diesel is one search I made and the only box I clicked for any wpts on the screen and still have a LOT of misc wpt that I'd like to get rid of like anchorages, rivers, bridges etc that get in the way of a search. Any idea?



I assume when you say detailed work, you're referring to nav details to operate the boat within, not where a marina is. Would make sense.

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I had the c120 and found it to be one of the best and easiest MFD to operate. Long live the "C" series.

Pgitug said:

I had the c120 and found it to be one of the best and easiest MFD to operate. Long live the "C" series.

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I like the new Garmin systems. I also like Active Captain. I just don't need Active Captain cluttering up Garmin or Furuno or any plotter. I can keep it handy right beside. 98% of the day I don't care about anchorages or marinas.

I'm assuming you're running Blue Chart/AC on an iPad or similar device separate from your plotter. This is what we do also and find that all the AC marks do get in the way at times. I too wish there was a way to turn some off like on their web page, much more useful IMO.

What I've done is also get the Navionoics app and use that for route planning. That's what we run on the plotter so it makes things simpler for me. I use the point to point auto routing on the iPad to get an idea of the time and distance of the next days travel then use that as a guide for the trip after careful review. I never put the auto route into the plotter but it gives me a good ballpark idea of the trip. Once you put your boat data into the app it takes that info into account as far as tides and depth etc. We pretty much use the BC/AC app to find marina or anchorage info and Navionics for the route planning.

Same here

BandB said:

We use Active Captain totally independent of our plotter, do not integrate. For us, the plotter is for routing and navigating and Active Captain is for looking at potential locations, marinas, anchorages etc. It's more a high level planning but not used for detailed work.

Click to expand...

I use blue charts and AC on my iPads. My two Garmin 8212 chart plotters are for other things. However, it is nice to build a route on active captain and transfer it wirelessly to the chart plotter.

Gordon J said:

I use blue charts and AC on my iPads. My two Garmin 8212 chart plotters are for other things. However, it is nice to build a route on active captain and transfer it wirelessly to the chart plotter.

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I'd just never build my route on Active Captain.

I'm a bit surprised that Jeffery hasn't chimed in on any of this. Has he been banned?

BandB said:

I'd just never build my route on Active Captain.

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I've used the AC web site to build routes, because of the simplicity of switching between charts, road maps and satellite view. Especially when I was planning a Canada trip and didn't want to buy all the charts too far in advance. Even without nautical charts, I could still rough-in a route using the other two options.

Not actually AC

BandB said:

I'd just never build my route on Active Captain.

Click to expand...

Actually, with AC overlaid on Garmin Blue Charts I am building the route on Garmin maps. AC just provides the information about marinas, hazards etc. It is quite handy being able to take an iPad to a restaurant and discuss the next days travels and do a little planning.

To your point, I have tried using the AC interface and don't find it very friendly, at least compared to Garmin Blue charts with AC overlaid.

Gordon

As far as routing goes, I can't wait til I get auto routing. Is it available on IPad which would be great. But the next chart plotter will have it, probably the Simrad or Garmin. Still tossed between the two. I'm a Garmin person, but Simrad looks awful good today, and I like the buttons with knobs on the chart plotter.

I have auto routing on my Garmins and it pretty damn good. A couple of times I needed to adjust it because it was too conservative on depth. I'm not sure to trust it completely so I keep constant vigilance.

I've been using the same electronics dealer for 40 years and buy what he says, I have Garmin.

Seevee said:

As far as routing goes, I can't wait til I get auto routing.

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Bigsfish said:

I have auto routing on my Garmins and it pretty damn good. A couple of times I needed to adjust it because it was too conservative on depth. I'm not sure to trust it completely so I keep constant vigilance.

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I only use Auto-routing on my Garmin for one thing. Let me explain:

- It very often sends me over offshore rocks that are just inches deeper than my draft. Not helpful when you factor in waves.
- It very often sends me on a much longer route around hazards which are no real threat based on my draft.
- It can't calculate a long or complicated route. It just gives up with a cryptic message about not being able to calculate a route (I forget the exact words.)

If I set my draft deeper, it will send me on even longer routes, while a lower number for draft is not a good idea either.

I do sometimes use it when I'm just too lazy to figure out the most efficient way to cross a bay or harbor that has numerous islands or other things that would make a straight-line route impossible.

But even then I only use it to get started on a reasonable heading, then deviate from it as needed on the fly.

That only works up to the point it fails open due to route complexity, so it's not really helpful for planning a whole day's travel. Unless you're in open water. In which case you don't really need the help with route planning.

Capt Tom

I agree with much of what you are saying but for me it works 90% of the time as it should. For instance I can set it to take me from Miami to Marathon and it hits every channel perfectly except one where I must hand steer.

While it is not perfect it is quickly approaching that standard.

Auto routing is improving with each generation of systems. We first used it with Transas and their routing is excellent. Garmin isn't as good, but it's still very helpful. We always set draft greater than it really is as we like a safety cushion. With our speed, a little extra distance isn't a concern, but I do understand how it might be at slower speeds. We generally will start at 7 or 8' draft. Then if we see it's taking us out of a reasonable route, we'll lower it. I would just say that auto-routing on recreational systems has come a long way.

Capt Tom

When you stated "I only use Auto-routing on my Garmin for one thing." were you referring to the "Guide To" function when using BlueChart g2 or BlueChart g2 Vision charts?

You also stated "It can't calculate a long or complicated route. It just gives up with a cryptic message about not being able to calculate a route (I forget the exact words.)" Did you call Garmin tech support about this, and if so, what did they tell you?

Just curious as I haven't experienced that behavior with any of my Garmin plotters. Maybe it's just the difference in our boating areas and the depth contours and shoreline details/complexity.

LarryM said:

Capt Tom

You also stated "It can't calculate a long or complicated route. It just gives up with a cryptic message about not being able to calculate a route (I forget the exact words.)" Did you call Garmin tech support about this, and if so, what did they tell you?

Just curious as I haven't experienced that behavior with any of my Garmin plotters. Maybe it's just the difference in our boating areas and the depth contours and shoreline details/complexity.

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I also haven't run into that on Garmin. I have seen that on Navionics.