Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

I had a "yikes" moment when I discovered this

I had set a course (down-below on the laptop) using Coastal Explorer and the NOAA RNC charts, then when we were underway I happened to check the CP at the helm and it looked like we were headed toward a hard grounding! CLOSE! I took a hard course change to avoid the questionable area while I reconciled between the Lowrance charts, the NOAA charts and the paper chart book I carry for backup. It was crazy because the recommended thoroughfare for big ships (entering Buzzards Bay) passes through this area. I submitted a support incident later with Lowrance to point out the error and never heard back from them. Based on that, plus the missing data for Salt Pond in BI, I decided I won't trust Lowrance's chart data and spent the extra money for the Navionics SD card (which also includes regular update downloads for $99 year).

It's not as if this is some out-of-the-way 3rd world area, and I don't think there's any good excuse for this deficiency.

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