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:
This is uncanny timing John! August & I just released a (free) Quarterdeck Podcast yesterday on tablet navigation in general, discussing the Orca in the second half which I’ve been using on SPICA all summer. We gave you a shout-out because you normally have disagreed with me on tablet navigation, at least in the early days 🙂
Having used Orca & Orca Core all summer, it’s a no brainer for coastal cruising for me on SPICA. You didn’t even touch on the cloud features – I can do routes of my phone at home that sync to the Core via the cloud, then show up on all my devices including the display (I assume you’ll get to this in Part 2?) And it automatically logs all my trips, saving all the NMEA data in the “Log.”
It’s very cool, not perfect but a real leap from standard tablet navigation which. Excited to hear about Part 2!
Hi Andy,
Good to hear from you and that Orca is serving you well.
Just to clarify for others, I disagreed that tablet navigation was the best way to navigate, not that was a bad way to navigate. At the time you had not even tried a deck mounted computer—not sure if you have yet—but were calling out tablets as best for weather and navigation.
As the years go by I get further and further from “best” and try to take a balanced look and think about best for different usage profiles.
To that end, this article covers my thoughts on the trade off between the three options based on extensive real world use of all three: https://www.morganscloud.com/2019/10/30/which-is-best-for-navigation-plotter-computer-or-tablet/
I have also repeatedly pointed out that there are issues with tablet navigation that must be managed: https://www.morganscloud.com/2017/01/22/10-tips-for-safe-navigation-with-phones-and-tablets/
And I didn’t miss the cloud or log features. This the first of three parts, and that comes later, as I made clear at the end of the article.
Hi John,
Since I’m Norwegian, as is Orca, I guess I could easily stumble into fanboy territory, but I’l try to keep it down. 🙂
I’ve followed Orca for years and I do agree that it may be a game changer. The current boat electronics market is predominantly motivated by seemingly moronic greed and unwillingness to embrace the tech that is already there. Orca has just walked in a door that was left wide open for more than a decade.
At the moment I don’t have any Orca hardware, but I’ve tried it on other boats and like it. I also use their software on my iPad Pro 12,9” 2017 and iPhone 15 pro, next to Garmin Boating (ex Navionics). I agree about your comments on some lacking ability to adapt to viewing preferences. I have noticed that they do improve continuously, though, and I do like it as an alternative.
The Orca tablet is made by Samsung, on special order. The same screen can be found much cheaper on other not even new tablets, but the difference is in the ruggedness and battery, of course. The software and the integration with the Core and boat systems works just as well with pretty much any other screen. Thus, the points around this tablet could be irrelevant to many users. Scanstrut, England, make good quality phone and tablet holders with wireless charging. A system worth considering.
In my mind, the Core is… what its name says it is… but that’s for the next article, of course. I’ll probably get a Core before my next longer trip.
Hi Stein,
Are you sure that Scanstrut make a secure tablet mount with wireless charging and there are water resistant daylight readable tablets, other than Orca, with wireless charging. If so please link us to both, since I was not able to find that combination, other than Orca, although that did surprise me, and I may have missed one. That said, while I can find a bunch at Scanstrut for phones, the tablet mounts have no coils that I can see.
Hi John, I used the Orca Core and an Apple iPad to cross the Atlantic in June. I was very happy with its performance. I especially liked using PredictWind Pro via Starlink to plot my course and then very easily import it into Orca. This system easily beat other boats using professional weather forecasters.
Hi Gino,
Sounds good, but to be fair, you could have also imported a Predictwind route into any number of other navigation devices that support the GPX format, so I don’t think this is really a win for Orca, which is what this is about, more a win for Predictwind.
Am I missing some special connecting method that’s unique to Orca?
I also don’t think it’s really fair to say that Predictwind beat the pros. Typically pros provide a limited package a few times a day and are probable using limited polars, or none, and with PW you can do many runs a day and tweak the hell out of them, and the polars, as required.
Two different products. PW great for experienced nerds who want to dig deep, pro router for those less experience who want to hand the problem off.
And then they can be combined: I can pretty much guarantee that if you had Stan Honey, using all the routing tools at his disposal, as your full on, full time, race router, PW equipped boats would not stand a chance, assuming they were all be sailed as hard and skillfully.
Point being that different tools and services have different strengths for different people in different circumstances.