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XtaSea · 15-03-2021, 04:57

Are there free maps for the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas?

CarCode · 15-03-2021, 05:14

As most other circumnavigators I use the cm93v2 charts. Even if they are some years old now they are sufficient because the countries in the mediterranean are still at their old places. For some harbour approaches I have made my own Kap files using Google Earth. This is all for free...

XtaSea · 15-03-2021, 05:27

Thanks CarCode. What is a good reliable source to download the cm93v2 charts from?

Over the years a number of conflicts made the headlines regarding the Turkey-Greece sea border. Is cm93v2 a safe choice to stay out of trouble?

Anders · 15-03-2021, 05:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by XtaSea

Thanks CarCode. What is a good reliable source to download the cm93v2 charts from?

Over the years a number of conflicts made the headlines regarding the Turkey-Greece sea border. Is cm93v2 a safe choice to stay out of trouble?

Posting links to pirate sites is not likely to be popular with the mods.

CarCode · 15-03-2021, 05:51

Ask your neighbor in the marina for these charts, to download it is more than 1 gigabit even when zipped. I stayed in Greece and not going to Turkey because of the better conditions in Greece. Cheapest place however in the mediterranean is Tunisia but not reachable in these corona days. I have been for 6 years in Monastir, Tunisia.

XtaSea · 15-03-2021, 05:56

Anders, what do you mean? Is cm93v2 a pirated material?

Anders · 15-03-2021, 06:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by XtaSea

Anders, what do you mean? Is cm93v2 a pirated material?

Yes it is.

BillKny · 15-03-2021, 06:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by XtaSea

Anders, what do you mean? Is cm93v2 a pirated material?

That's the definition of "free" in the real world. You get what you pay for...

I wonder what would happen if a smart insurance adjuster investigating a claim for serious grounding damage asked, "What charts did you have on board?" and the answer was, "10 year old pirated charts of unknown provenance?"

Would that meet the implicit warrantee of seaworthiness? Not for me...

Joh.Ghurt · 15-03-2021, 06:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by XtaSea

Are there free maps for the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas?

No, there aren't any free maps that are legal for Europe. The main maps of the area are coming

from HMHO (UK), SHOM (France), IIM (Italy) and probably some greek one I don't know about. All of them are still trying to monetise this to the maximum because either you work very locally, you're a shipping company with big ships or you're a filthy rich yacht-owner. The attitude of the USA that this data has already paid for by the tax-payer and thus should be available for (nearly) free hasn't made it to Europe yet.

As a consequence, most chart plotter manufacturer, starting with Navionics, just charge a more or less reasonable yearly fee and do everything to keep you locked into their software-eco-system. Sometimes you even have to pay multiple times if you happen to own the wrong combo of software from the same manufacturer.

OpenCPN is of no interest to either parties in a positive way, they only might go out of their way to make it less useful to all of us cheap-skates.

And for this reason all you can find are some cracked / copied data that got out a long time ago for OpenCPN in Europe, or some scans of old paper-charts.

bcn · 15-03-2021, 06:30

Almost the complete Med is covered by the oeSENC and oeRNC charts available from o-charts.org for OpenCPN.
These are up-to-date charts, licensed from official bodies or reliable chart sources like Imray.
The oeSENC vector charts have exactly the same content as the official charts from the Hydrographical Offices.
o-charts is an initiative of OpenCPN to bring reliable, up-to-date charts to the OCPN user community at a reasonable price.

XtaSea · 15-03-2021, 06:30

The notion that the source data have been produced using taxpayer funds and therefore should be made available to the citizens of the world make sense to me.

I would urge manufacturers of the marine navigation systems to focus on attracting & retaining customers by creating useful navigation software, not through the paid source data.

Joh.Ghurt · 15-03-2021, 06:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcn

Almost the complete Med is covered by the oeSENC and oeRNC charts available from o-charts.org for OpenCPN.

Nice to see that this happens and I hope they have a lot of success.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcn

These are up-to-date charts, licensed from official bodies or reliable chart sources like Imray.

For the Aegean Sea, those are by Imray, which makes nice overall charts but don't go much into detail. Don't expect to be able to zoom in too much.

XtaSea · 15-03-2021, 06:59

Joh.Ghurt, I don't need to zoom in much but there are two spots between Greece and Turkey where I feel the need to have multiple chart sources just to be sure. One is 0.94nm mile and the other 1.55nm wide. And the current political atmosphere is a bit hairy.

cm93v2 seems like a good choice if I can locate a copy. Will also look into the o-charts.