Most Northwest mariners will eventually head up the inside Passage to Alaska or at least to the beautiful inland Canadian waters of the Inside Passage, not to mention trips to the Gulf Islands, just northwest of the San Juans, and for these ventures we will need charts. Canadian paper charts serve well, indeed, some mariners even are biased toward Canadian paper charts when they have an option of US or CND. Obtaining and using these are the same as always. Catalogs work the same, prices about the same, and outlets the same.

What is dramatically different once we cross the border, however, is the use of echarts, which is more and more a part of our routine navigation–or at least it should be considered if not yet done. Even if one does not choose to navigate point to point by ECS (electronic charting system), echars remain extremely valuable for route planning, since many ECS include one button display of tides and currents–some will even pull in the latest weather map and forecasts. The big difference for US mariners is, unlike the US NOAA echarts, which are all free of charge, Canadian echarts are not free. Being not free, also means they are encrypted, which adds a layer of complexity to their use. Another layer of complexity is the new generation of echart programs from Nobeltec and MaxSea called Time Zero do not run standard format echarts at all, which has pros and cons for users and suppliers.

I9100 Efs Folder Er. Garmin Blue charts are vector charts, the BSB charts are raster charts. Many people, myself included. Bit Torrent downloads of Charts etc. I am indeed sorry about the state of affairs regarding Canadian charts. If I were Canadian, I would write to my MP.. Canadian BSB charts are encrypted with the.

If we were all running Macs, we would be accustomed to this control for the sake of conformity–it is not all a matter of revenue. Otherwise, modern echart programs like Coastal Explorer, Memory-Map, and OpenCPN will run echarts from any source.

Next we have the common decision to make that applies to all echarts: Do we want raster charts (called RNC), which are graphic images of the actual printed charts, or do we want vector charts (called ENC), which are essentially formulas for the various components of the chart, which are then drawn on the fly as the ECS displays them. Wiz Khalifa New Album Onifc Zip there. There are pros and cons to each, which we discuss in a forthcoming post. I would venture to say that most mariners entering into the use of echarts for the first time will prefer the RNC, since they look like the charts they are used to. If asked, that would also be our strong recommendation. RNC are large files; Enc are small files.