Marin
Is the Navimatics tides and charts package for both the PNW US and Canada a stand alone App?
Not sure how you define stand-alone, but it is a complete app that includes all the charts from the US-Mexico border up to and including the entire state of Alaska. Oh, it also includes Hawaii. I includes all the tide and current tables--- tap on the T or C icon on the chart and you immediately get the table for that day. You can scroll back and forth on the table to get a specific time and you can roll the selector wheels to get whatever month, day, and year you want.
You can scroll with your finger all the way from the bottom to the top of the charts--- they connect seamlessly. The outlines of the charts that are in your field of view on the display are shown as red boxes. But scrolling, zooming in and out, or rotating the display around is completely seamless. You can also put the display in North up or "free" which lets you rotate the charts around however you want. The charts are vector charts, not raster charts. So rotating a chart does not rotate the names, etc. on the chart.
Like a full-up plotter, you can tap on a navaid or other feature and you will get the information about that feature. The app uses all the symbols, terms, and definitions used in Chart 1.
You can put in a waypoint and you can navigate to it but so far as I've been able to determine reading the user guide you cannot make or store routes. You can store waypoints and call them up from a bookmark menu and navigate to one from your current position. But it doesn't look like you can string waypoints together in to a route.
It has what they call an HSI (Horizontal Situation Indicator) that looks very much like the one you'd have in an airplane. So if you put in or select a stored waypoint and navigate to it, you can call up the HSI which will be overlaid on the screen and this shows you your track, how far off your course line you are, and which way to steer to get back onto your course line.
It also has a "ruler" that lets you put two points on a chart and measure the straight line distance between them as well as get a bearing.
But I would not consider it an equal alternative to the Navionics app which as I understand it is much more of a full-function navigation package. But if your primary interest is in having all the charts in one place on a high-res screen that lets you zoom in and our and move around them at will plus have all the tide and current tables for the stations up and down the coast as well as all the navaid, obstruction, and features information, it's perfect so far as I'm concerned.
You do not need to be online to use the charts or the features like tide and current tables, or navigate to a waypoint, and so on. You DO need to be online to receive the latest updates from Active Captain if you have an Active Captain account. But once the current Active Captain info is downloaded to your iPad, you don't need to be online to view it.
The US & Canada West Coast is a separate app. There are also apps for the US West Coast only, the east coast (US only or US & Canada), the Great Lakes and perhaps others.