electronic charting and seaclear

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cambscot

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I have a redundant laptop that I'm intending on leaving on the boat which will serve a multitude of purposes.

I've been looking at the SeaClear navigational software, which is free to use, and utilises "raster charts". I'm new to electronic charting, so I'm not sure what formats are provided by whom, and what level of detail is offered.

Has anyone got any experience of SeaClear and raster-charts, or have a handy introductory guide to PC based charting and navigation in general?

tia

a
 
If you have a scanner then you can use your paper charts as a source for the raster images. IIRC the Seaclear help documentation suggests practical ways of doing this. If you happen to use Admiralty Folio charts you'll find that they can be scanned in quarters using an A4 scanner and then the four images can be 'stitched' to produce the final raster version of the original chart. It's a fairly straight forward but time consuming process!
 
A raster chart is one that looks and acts like a paper chart - e.g. a scanned in bitmap of the chart, or provided by an outside supplier.

You can also get vector charts where the data is not stored as a picture and can change in detail as you zoom in/out etc.
 
IMHO Seaclear is not worth the effort if you need to scan and stitch all your paper charts (unless you're retired and its winter!). I have tried and believe me, it is extremely tedious.

I have used the free version of Maptech for many years now, both for planning and for real time navigation and it has never disappointed. It uses Admiralty charts which are still much better than the vector charts that most chart plotters use (IMHO). The new Maptech chart folios are also now very good value (at least compared to previous pricing). You can get the whole of the UK or Denmark to Gibraltar for around £90 each. I bought the northern Europe (Denmark to Gibraltar) DVD last year and it includes around 700 charts (of UKHO, French, Netherlands and German origin). BTW - I have no connection with Maptech - I'm just a satisfied user. /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif
 
Seaclear is very good program with none of the bolt on rubbish that just clutters your screen. It was one of the first plotters to give AIS capability.

People go on about scanning and stitching as if it's a "prison job" ... it's not if you sort what you need and how.

If you wish - as a Seaclear user I'm willing to assist if you want to pm me.

Yes you can buy various other packages with charts for 50 quid and up ... but the economy packages lack the AIS and also autohelm control / passthrough data functions.

To knock Seaclear when the guy never wrote it for commercial resale .. in fact Olle wrote it purely for his own use and then was good enough to let people have it for free.
Seaclear in fact can use many forms of commercial charts but no longer runs BSB format since Maptech altered the data file to CAP from KAP. But older KAP format BSB runs fine.
 
I agree that Maptech freebie chartplotter doesn't have AIS capability; that's why I tried Seaclear - it came free with the NASA AIS Engine. However, I found the problems with the charts made it almost unusable. That was 2 years ago so maybe the latest version is better/more user friendly.
I now use Yacht-AIS to show AIS targets on a 'radar' type of display on the laptop. The display is completely free of clutter and very readable. It also has a very loud alarm that can't be ignored!
 
Not knocking Seaclear, but Imray Digital Charts (IDC) has AIS capability which works (I use it!) in the bundled packages , in my case for Channel raster (Imray natch) charts Dunkirk to Brest, Felixstowe to Scillies plus 2 years updates plus tides for £39.95. Pretty good value imo. Only real irritant is tides one year only and yearly update is about £18 and it doesn't have the useful ability to run the tide arrows display over time like my Maptech chartplotter software. This as commented above is good, but as you say doesn't have AIS in the "free" Chart Navigator version bundled with the charts.
 
I have been using Seaclear for a couple of years for sailing my local area and it's a great tool. Simple to use and has all the basic tools you'll need. However, obtaining charts for it is a pain unless you want to scan them yourself. I'm off for a trip around W.Scotland next month so I've invested £42 in the RYA/Admiralty plotting software. It includes all the ardmiralty charts for the area, allows route planning, has tides for the year and accepts gps input for realtime tracking. Been playing with it and it seems a great deal
 
I used seaclear (and free us east coast charts) on a trip a couple of years ago, plugged it into a handheld gps via a serial port on the PC and the results were good. Easy to use, keeps everything fairly simple. We used on the ICW where navigation is a bit "left a bit, no right a bit" and it seemed to be good and accurate all the way. Have also used Cmap software (crossing the atlantic) which is also good, especially for route planning over longer distances but someone said it was pricey.
 
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