I’ve been enjoying the use of my Navionics iphone app for sometime and planning a research trip I thought it might be quite useful to upgrade to an ipad so that i could enjoy the experience on a bigger screen.

Given that I was going to be using it primarily in Holland or at home I thought there wasn’t much point getting a 3G version, especially as I’d had good reports about the increased availability of free wifi in many of the Dutch marinas.

My crew took little encouragement to invest in a top of the range iPad4 and £37.99 for Navionics HD UK and Holland, so imagine our disappointment when we discovered the wretched thing didn’t have a GPS. What an idiot you probably think, but with everyone and their dog having a smart phone with GPS you just sort of assume, don’t you?

The ANWB, publishers of that fine range of Dutch waterways maps, also do an app (‘there’s an app for that’) which has the whole series of charts with details of bridge openings and moorings. Awfully useful you think, but how much more useful if it actually had a little boat pootling along showing you where you were, so that if you get your knickers in a twist over which bridge you are looking at, it’s all there in glorious high definition.

I feel a little bit like i’m back in 2003, wandering round town looking for Bagels and Beans wifi cafes. I thought the world had moved on, but it hasn’t, not that much.