Electronic Charts

[Tom Bastable]

Hi,

Im at the stage of seriously planning a circumnavigation, does anyone know where i can get cheap or, even better, free electronic charts?

Tom

[Pblais]

For US waters You can get BSB or ENC charts free from NOA (the folks that pay for them). Once you get outside theb US you genrally have to pay or settle for old pirated charts.

So what software / chart plotter do you need them to work with?

[Tom Bastable]

Ive just got a lap top with windows xp on it, was planning on getting paper charts for the trip, just need to blag them some how!

[MidLandOne]

The official electronic charts of the New Zealand Charting Area are also free - these cover New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Tokelau, Cook Islands and the small scale and planning charts for the whole of the Pacific.

These are currently all raster charts however (ENC's start coming out later this year) so one needs to use one of the electronic charting systems on ones notebook that handles encrypted official raster charts - most applications aimed at pleasure sailors do not, but those that do are often cheaper than the pleasure sailor ones, so go figure. Details are available on the Land Information NZ (LINZ) web site.

High resolution TIF images of all these charts are also available free on the same site and are able to be used in the likes of the free SeaClear charting application but unlike the official charts these images are not maintained in corrected form.

[GordMay]

New Zealand Chart Catalogue (NZ202) ~ Online searchable image database
LINZ - Chart Catalogue

Including:
Official Raster Navigational Charts (RNCs):
NZMariner - Official Raster Navigational Charts