A few thoughts about Active Captain

By Mike Jastrzebski

Now that we’ve reached the Chesapeake and are anchored in Deltaville, Virginia, I’ve had a little time to reflect on our trip up the intracoastal.

Besides our chart plotter, VHF radio, and autopilot, I would have to say that Active Captain has proved itself to be indispensable. During the trip we never once opened our Skipper Bob’s anchorage book or our printed guide books, although we did use the Dozier’s Waterway Guide book once we arrived at Charleston, SC and Beaufort, NC for local information. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of information about these towns on Active Captain, but we had the guides so we used them.

We use Active Captain on our iPad with the Garmin Blue Charts and find it very easy to use. We came to especially appreciate the shoaling warnings along the intracoastal since we draw 6’4″, and I’m sure we would have gone aground at least once without the warnings.

In planning our daily travels we found the anchoring information to be particularly helpful along with the marina information to help plan our fuel stops.

That said, there were a few issues I had with Active Captain and Blue Charts. First, since we made two jumps outside of the intracoastal I had to worry about Active Captain automatically updating as I came into a port and needed it most. I suspect that this is a problem on the Garmin side of things, but it would be nice if Active Captain would work with Garmin to set up a delay button for the updates.

The second issue is very minor. Periodically we came across a warning that a red or green marker was missing with a request that the note be removed if the problem was corrected. Twice the markers had been replaced and I was unable to figure out how to remove them. I also was unable to leave reviews. Again this might be a Garmin issue rather than an Active Captain issue.

Overall, I highly recommend Active Captain to anyone who doesn’t already have it downloaded to a computer or tablet.

 

Share on Facebook