We have our Yeoman Navigator Pro digitizer
built into the underside of Adagio's nav station. Look at this rendering
of nav station area where you see two crew at nav station. The crew sitting
on the port side is using the Yeoman - there is a faint outline of the active
digitizing area visible on the work surface.
Like echarts the Yeoman helps eliminate clerical errors that can put you on
the bricks. (e.g., errors transferring lat/lon going from chart to GPS or vice
versa). The Yeoman also cuts down on "pilot workload", and allows
one to keep an almost real time plot of GPS fixes.
Another feature we like is the integration with suitable radars. This allows
you to point at chart features while the radar waypoint lollipop tracks your
cursor position on the chart. Handy for correlating radar image to charted features.
We also use several echart systems when known-accurate echart data is available.
The particular software we use is selected based upon the most accurate charts
available for our operating region. E.g., in New Caledonia the French Hydro
charts are the best, so we use MaxSea there as it supports MapMedia,
the only echart source we know of for the French Hydrographic Office data. In
Australia we use Endeavour because it supports the Australian Hydrographic
Office, Royal Australian Navy Seafarer charts (the echarts are HCRF format,
the same format as UK ARCS).
Endeavour, by Hydrographic Sciences Australia,
is the best echart software of all we have used, but only useful today for yachts
in waters covered by HCRF data or by S-57 ENC chart data. Endeavour will soon
support Maptech - when that update is released, this software should
be investigated by those in US waters. Endeavour is used by the Australian Royal
Navy vessels. The Australian Royal Navy is very fussy about navigation.