ENC's and Viewers

[(Nobody You Know)]

At the risk of redundancy - surely someone must have brought this up in the past - I have been trying to wade through the mounds of information on setting up a back-up chart plotter using my laptop PC and hand held Garmin GPS, and perhaps eventually my (android) cell phone. (Back in 2003 I seceded in doing this with software called Fugawi. It didn't work well at all because the new gov. ENC's were premature showing the markers alright but they had no identification, ie. numbers. Fugawi would not refund me my money either).

Now once again, I am attempting to, at least, see how well the free stuff works which is made available in the U.S.C.G. navigation section of their web site. Question is, has any of the participants of the forum had any success putting this together and what software did you use? For what it's worth I'm sure my laptop uses Windows 7.

Please be made aware that, pursuant to an article that came out recently in the Cruisers Net and was later repeated in the Ensign (US Sail & Power Squadrons), strongly suggests that printed charts will become a thing of the past and that ENC's are the way of the future. It has to do with budget cuts (hello) plus the ability to do updates electronically more frequently and at lower costs than yearly reprints, as I understand it.

Comments are appreciated.
Bill

 

[Pascal]

Here is some info I put together a couple of years ago, the stuff on PC viewers is still good and PolarNavy is still my favorite... For mobile devices, I now use the garmin bluechart all which i find much better than others because it has excellent Bahamas charts (mostly explorer based)

http://www.sandbarhopper.com/boatips/navsoftware.htm

 

[captainwjm]

agree w/ both Polar Navy and Garmin

 

[Boatsb]

Navionics on android has served me well. Similar to the full marine Electronics package and $10.00

Computers crash. Tablets and phones run a small kernal of software and are far more reliable, portable and cost effective.


as for paper n charts. The will be available for private companies. Not from the gov. Kind of like reasonably priced health insurance.

 

[magnawake]

I'm running Polar Navy on a lap top and garmin Bluchart on the Ipad. Three years now and nothing has ever crashed. I had a screen go black though on the lap top. I cant believe how much we like our Ipad. We still have charts on the bridge that are in book form that we use.

 

[Pascal]

I ran softwAre on a base laptop for years, first Seaclear, then OpenCPN and polar and never had a crash although I wasn't running much else while using the laptop for navigation, except the webcam.

Crashes usually happen when resources are maxed out by bloated software. PolarNavy is fairly small so crashed are unlikely.

That said an iPad is a lot more convenient being brighter, easier to use and waterproof (with a case )

 

[MikeP]

Ipad/InavX works great. My old 3010C chart plotters (latest hi tech thing when I installed them) are now just there as space taker-uppers and to look appropriately marine-oriented. The iPad/InavX does everything better.

 

[TommyB]

At the risk of redundancy - surely someone must have brought this up in the past - I have been trying to wade through the mounds of information on setting up a back-up chart plotter using my laptop PC and hand held Garmin GPS, and perhaps eventually my (android) cell phone. (Back in 2003 I seceded in doing this with software called Fugawi. It didn't work well at all because the new gov. ENC's were premature showing the markers alright but they had no identification, ie. numbers. Fugawi would not refund me my money either).
......
Bill

Try this.
http://opencpn.org/ocpn/
It's pretty nice, it will read both raster / vector or both at same time. Works great on a PC, Linux or winblows.
It's open source , so it's free

 

[(Nobody You Know)]

Thanks to everyone who responded! I have been too busy running the boat to download any of this - which is a good excuse.
Regardz.

 

[Finalee]

Another great feature with the IPad , provided it contains a GPS chip,is it does not need to be connected to wifi to work. I have used Navionics all over the Chesapeake with great results. It is worth your time to get up to speed on the power housed in an IPad before making a purchase of any marine GPS or plotters.

 

[34Hatt]

I ran softwAre on a base laptop for years, first Seaclear, then OpenCPN and polar and never had a crash although I wasn't running much else while using the laptop for navigation, except the webcam.

Crashes usually happen when resources are maxed out by bloated software. PolarNavy is fairly small so crashed are unlikely.

That said an iPad is a lot more convenient being brighter, easier to use and waterproof (with a case )

Same here in 13 years of running a laptop for the first 2 years then a mounted desktop I had one bad hard drive go 10 years ago and that was it. I know people with other GPS units that have had more problems than I did. I got a garmin 4210 last year because it was a smoking deal but still have my computer running Polar navy.
I started with the Capt Voyager then played with seaclear until I tried Polar navy and that was the one for the last 3 years.
Have Navionics on the phone but I am not impressed with it but its just backup for the backup!