Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

I used the CHS charts on MacENC...

Canada charges you a bunch for the electronic charts. There are a number of PC and at least a couple of Mac programs that will run the Canadian Hydrographic Charts, but that means viewing them down in the cabin, typically. There is really nothing like the convenience of having something on the chart plotter at the helm, in my opinion.

If I was looking at a whole new setup that did not involve a helm mounted chartlplotter, I would seriously consider an iPad and the Navionics charts (the iPad will also run MacENC and all of the NOAA charts for free and whatever you choose to buy from CHS). An iPad and the Navionics charts cost less - far less - than the CHS charts alone.

Incidentally, I found discrepancies between the Navionics chart cartridges for Raymarine and the CHS raster scanned charts - neither was right all the time. Also the CHS charts are very annoyingly cut up as delivered: for example there might be an Important Warning annotation but the warning text has been excised, or the charts cut into intricate jigsaw puzzles so that no one covers a very small and delicate passage. This was more true in Newfoundland, but there are examples on the NS coast as well. Why they don't just scan the chart as it is and give it to you for their usurious price I don't know, NOAA does a better job for free.

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