CMap, Garmin, Maptech and paper chart surveys also have the contour lines drawn on the islands, but have incorrect locations for the islands. It goes with the territory when cruising in areas not commercially important. You seem to only place blame on Navionics and no other.

And just how bad is it that the chart showed you a few dozen feet on land when at anchor just off its shoreline? I have had worse in New England. It certainly doesn't effect navigation, particularly since you don't follow waypoints or rely on electronic charts or navigation (and the paper charts are even less accurate).

As for referencing, have you looked at the satellite photos for the San Blas Islands? They are low resolution, blurry and many of the islands do not even show up on the photo. At least they were - Google updates these continuously and I haven't looked at GE in quite a while. When planning for coming here in 2010, I tried to make GE charts of the area and the only island that showed up on GE was BBQ. The rest of the San Blas were just a blur if they showed at all.

If you have done any exploring here at all, then you have followed Bauhaus's routes and waypoints - they are often times the only way through some of the passes. Routes and waypoints are GPS and navigation issues - they have nothing to do with having an autopilot whatsoever. So we follow Bauhaus's guidance, but keep our eyes open. Which is how his errors are caught. If you haven't caught these, you either have not been in the same areas, or haven't been paying attention to his charts.

Trusting electronic charts is in no way different than trusting paper charts. In fact, given the ease of updating electronic charts, and the number of updates continually made available and easily accessed, people using electronic charts have more and better information than those relying solely on paper ones. And in this area, the paper charts are completely useless - do you even have them?

Mark

Mark