I don’t often review marine electronics, as I prefer to write about systems in a more generic form to help members make their own gear-buying decisions.
But every so often a product comes along that I see as game changing, and Orca Navigation potentially qualifies. So I ordered a system and have dug in to see if it can:
- Address the many weaknesses and dangers I see in navigating on generic tablets and phones.
- Provide an equally functional navigation solution as plotters, but without the expense, which lately has got truly silly.
- Provide a better route entry and edit process than our B&G plotter, which is so bad it makes my teeth hurt.
- Come even close to the functionality of TimeZero running on a PC with an on-deck screen, keyboard, and mouse. Still by far the best navigation system I have used.
- Compare with TZ iBoat, by far my favourite tablet navigation software.
- Act as a replacement for the full-on H5000 B&G sailing instrument system that came with our J/109, at least for a club racer.
- Replace, or at least backup the functional, but fragile and poorly built, B&G remote I use to control the autopilot when singlehanding by utilizing my Apple Watch and/or my iPhone.
- Act as a functional radar display.
- Make a good cup of tea…just wanted to see if you were paying attention.
What I think will make this review different and better, is that in all areas I have incumbent technology on the boat to compare against, that is arguably some of the best of each breed, which avoids this becoming just a breathless fan-boy listing of cool features, many of which don’t actually make navigation any easier or safer…yea, I’m looking at you, YouTubers.
The other thing that I bring to the table is over 50 years of navigation experience, which enables me to zero in on what actually matters to get the job done, rather than just getting impressed by a list of features.
Of course, the danger of that experience (and being an old fart) is being stuck in my ways so I don’t give Orca a fair shake. However, given that I have spent most of my working life immersed in high tech and have deep experience with all three types of electronic navigation systems, I think I can avoid that.
So let’s see how Orca does against the above list and the unashamedly high bar I set for navigation systems.
Architecture
But first, a quick explanation of the Orca architecture, which is a lot of the secret of the product’s potential as a disrupter: