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Old 02-01-2017, 05:31 PM   #2
tadhana
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City: New England and Canada to Florida
Vessel Name: Tadhana
Vessel Model: Helmsman 38 Pilothouse
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 596
We started with Open CPN about 10 or 11 years ago. It uses NOAA CHarts, price is right, free.. A little over 2 years ago we switched to Coastal Explorer, also NOAA Charts and it has Active Captain Data. It is fantastic, it tells you when you have chart updates. Its tides and currents have proven to be a terrific asset in route planning and in running the ICW. Lately (2 years) we have also been using Navionics on an iPad as a back up, because its always easy to up date and its "Sonar Charts" Bring a level of detail and information on depths and channels not available from NOAA or Garmin. These two systems have guided us over 10,000 miles in the past two years alone. For Canada, you will need canadian charts obviously. They are readily available from Navionics. We keep Garmin bluecharts on an iPad for those times we want to check Active Captain.
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