Today we came back from the 60th Shiyut Arim (The cities regatta in loose translation) which is the oldest still going sailing event in Israel occurring almost every year since 1939.
The event was wonderful with a festive evening on the eve of the event, an extreme downwind sail from Haifa to Herzliya and a great downwind sail from Herzliya to Ashkelon (The southernmost marina in Israel). Even the way back to Haifa was in lovely calm (maybe too calm) weather reaching and broad reaching.
The event saw nearly 50 participating boats with a few hundred sailors.
The event was organized wonderfully by the Carmel Sailing Community managing board of volunteers and many sponsors and other volunteers.
In a more technical note I would like to share my first experience using OpenCPN on an Android tablet in the cockpit. For those of us who do not want to invest thousands of dollars in a map vendor locked chart plotter this could be a neat solution. I do have a long experience using OpenCPN on a laptop on the chart table, but that is less comfortable mainly in coastal waters and regattas.
The setup was fairly simple and quite temporary including mounting using brackets, a piece of wood and a car phone holder.
The tablet is an old Nexus 7. Maps can be obtained online from many sources including OpenSeaMap and raster charts. Be aware that not all the plugins available for a PC installation are available for the Android version.
The main use of the app was for following the route with the many gates and finish lines of both the legs. The app did what it had to do, and was running surprisingly smooth on that old tablet. The setup was also quite convenient in that I could take the tablet off the holder and use wherever I wanted in the boat.
There are still some issues with this installation:
The main use of the app was for following the route with the many gates and finish lines of both the legs. The app did what it had to do, and was running surprisingly smooth on that old tablet. The setup was also quite convenient in that I could take the tablet off the holder and use wherever I wanted in the boat.
There are still some issues with this installation:
- Not waterproof whatsoever. If we were racing upwind, I would not have been able to leave to tablet outside due to water spray (I had a backup which is my Samsung Galaxy 5 which is waterproof).
- No charging port. In this particular setup we used an external power bank and placed in the holder on the pedestal.
- The bracket is flimsy and will break easily if someone leaned on it.
- The phone was not secured in any way.
- The bracket was rotating, and thus I had to add that blue line to hold it.
Furthermore the installation was not tested at night time to see how much glare the tablet produced.
All in all the installation served its purpose wonderfully, and greatly helped with the race.
