Just looked at cost of navionics + cards, wtf! are they insane?

S

steve yates

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 Oct 2014
Messages
4,247
Location
Benfleet, Essex at mo/Scottish West coast soon
Visit site
Starting to think about instrumentation once I have completed my rewire, I noticed a nice garmin plotter that paul had recommended on another thread and thought, thats handy, I bought one of those recently second hand in great nick. Now I have only ever navigated on my boats with charts or navionics on an iphone or ipad.
Can you imagine my shock to discover navionics + cards for BITS of the UK are £160 each. So to get entire british isles coverage I am looking at over £600. Thats insane! And thats before I think of toddling off round the baltic, down to the med or across the pond.

Do folk seriously spend this much loading up with charts? If thats how much it costs to feed a chartplotter then I’m buggered if I’ll need one, I’ll stick to tablets or go to the orca system.

I had a look on ebay, there are cheaper options but cant transfer tracks and cant even be used on garmins own plotters.

I am truly gobsmacked.
 
Let me tell you my chart plotter story.

I bought the Red Monster in Darkest Lymington. She was ashore and the sellers, the Ministry of Defence, had amused themselves by stripping out everything electronic that they could reach without climbing the mast.

So I set out to put it all back, with some invaluable help from Paul Rainbow of this parish, and I took the opportunity to fit the latest chart plotter. I bought the latest Navionics cards for my intended voyage back to civilisation and we launched and #I son and I pottered round to the Hamble where the steering gear was professionally rebuilt.

In passing, and off the point, as the various parts of the very nice very expensive steering gear were exhumed the expert (a very good bloke, whom I’m happy to recommend) was heard to say:
“I did that”
“I did that, too”
“I most certainly didn’t do that!”

Anyway a list of lawless resolutes ie two good friends and two of their young relatives arrived just as the forecast went wrong and we duly set off towards the east. In an F8, but the Red Monster, with a couple of laps of the planet under her belt, isn’t bothered by that sort of thing.

At about the longitude of the Royal Sovereign, we sailed off the chart.

Plain white screen on the plotter.

Being old fashioned I had bought a set of Imrays coastal folios “just in case”, but now that the case had come to pass, I saw that they didn’t extend to the outside passage of the Thames Estuary, where, given the Red Monster’s considerable draft, I intended to go.

“What to do?…”

Inspiration! We passed close to Dover, and got a cell signal. I found my credit card, and downloaded the Navionics app onto my phone.

We arrived in Harwich a few hours later.

So I sent the faulty card to Navionics with a few well chosen words. They added the missing information and sent it back, without a word of apology or even regret.

This being ybw.com, when I first posted this account, the Experts all told me that I should have planned the whole route on the plotter, days in advance, so I would have known before we set out. This is certainly true.
 
Last edited:
ithet said:
Navionics 28XG is the Official full UK card for those without one to update. Available for under £220.

https://www.marinesuperstore.com/gps-radar/charts/navionics-large-charts?attribute_colour=EU628L+/+28XG+UK+&+Ireland&utm_source=google_shopping&utm_medium=pcn&utm_campaign=MSS&utm_term=NAV+&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19776997828&gbraid=0AAAAAD-ZtyX-EvIblbj3LnjkQnt04YHiF&gclid=CjwKCAjwhe3OBhABEiwA6392zCAKXbpWLhgifGlPuT06pKiaAmiM-kBun14WvMMgwbdMLBz32_aj7BoCw7MQAvD_BwE

I am sure others will be along with advice on how to get unofficial cards for less.
Click to expand...
But not compatible with Garmins own plotters alas!!!

Mebbe I’ve got too used to the relative inexpensiveness and ease of use of navionics in the world of apps and tablets, and I should just bend over and take it.
But I really am still bemused and affronted :)
I kinda thought they would make some money from the plotters and then make their real money with the charts and updates, like inkjet printers. But they are obviously not going for volume at those prices! Its cheaper to buy all the admiralty folios!

Update, its not £600 to get coverage of the british isles, its £740! Because they leave off a chunk of the nw irish coast, and you can’t buy it in navionics + version, it has to be the £260 sapphire versionor whatever the hell they call it, just for that wee chunk.
 
I don't understand. You've bought a Garmin plotter (who own Navionics) and this is the Navionics Plus European Large Area Chartplotter Chart for £230 which gives you the whole of the UK and the whole of Ireland plus the whole of the North European coast from Brest to almost Denmark... or have I missed a trick somewhere?

PS: I'm interested in the same question as I've just bought an Onwa plotter and looking to load either Navionics or C-Map of the same total area.
 
steve yates said:
But not compatible with Garmins own plotters alas!!!

………

Update, its not £600 to get coverage of the british isles, its £740! Because they leave off a chunk of the nw irish coast, and you can’t buy it in navionics + version, it has to be the £260 sapphire versionor whatever the hell they call it, just for that wee chunk.
Click to expand...
That seems very odd as Garmin / Navionics website said (on one place re plotter compatibility table) to use Navionics Plus for Garmin plotters.
What model of Garmin chart plotter do you have. And hopefully the expert Paul will be along soon to clarify.
 
Babylon said:
I don't understand. You've bought a Garmin plotter (who own Navionics) and this is the Navionics Plus European Large Area Chartplotter Chart for £230 which gives you the whole of the UK and the whole of Ireland plus the whole of the North European coast from Brest to almost Denmark... or have I missed a trick somewhere?

PS: I'm interested in the same question as I've just bought an Onwa plotter and looking to load either Navionics or C-Map of the same total area.
Click to expand...

I have also bought a cheap plotter with its own charts already installed. Can't really see the value in buying extra stuff.

.
 
steve yates said:
Starting to think about instrumentation once I have completed my rewire, I noticed a nice garmin plotter that paul had recommended on another thread and thought, thats handy, I bought one of those recently second hand in great nick. Now I have only ever navigated on my boats with charts or navionics on an iphone or ipad.
Can you imagine my shock to discover navionics + cards for BITS of the UK are £160 each. So to get entire british isles coverage I am looking at over £600. Thats insane! And thats before I think of toddling off round the baltic, down to the med or across the pond.

Do folk seriously spend this much loading up with charts? If thats how much it costs to feed a chartplotter then I’m buggered if I’ll need one, I’ll stick to tablets or go to the orca system.

I had a look on ebay, there are cheaper options but cant transfer tracks and cant even be used on garmins own plotters.

I am truly gobsmacked.
Click to expand...
You don't have to buy small charts to get UK coverage, buy a full UK chart.

Garmin plotters do not use Navionics charts. They either use Garmin charts or Garmin Navionics charts depending on the age/model of plotter. What is it that you bought ?

If it's a modern plotter full UK charts are £200 Garmin Navionics+ NSEU628L U.K. Ireland & Holland (010-C1271-20)
 
I don't know about Garmin and it's a a few years since I bought my chart card but, when I did so, it was extremely confusing because the large area coverage like "UK and Baltic" or "South Coast England to Spain and Morocco" only about twice the price of small area coverage, like "Irish Sea, Bristol to IoM" and you need several of the small coverage to match the large area chart.

I made a long post on this when I was shopping a few years ago: Navionics vs C-Map for B&G Vulcan.

Some of the links in that are now 404, but a quick comparison on today's offerings:
Total price: £600​

Same coverage for £230.​

You can do the same for other regions, e.g. Brittany and Biscay or Atlantic Spain and Portugal vs Kiel, South Coast, whole of Atlantic Europe and Western Mediterranean.

If you find the small area charts first and add up the price you're gonna be like "600 quid! WTF!?!" Whereas £230 for the whole area isn't bad. These charts really need a sales network to help the buyer understand the products - if you have a Merry Fisher and you rarely go more than 20nm from your home port then the £150 charts make perfect sense - they're 4x the coverage you need. If you have a 30' or 40' boat you cruise for a month or two in the summer then clearly the L charts are much better value. But it doesn't make sense for the Merry Fisher guy to buy the L chart "just in case" because there's no way he's motoring to Scotland or Spain from the south coast.

I hate the whole "you own nothing and you will be happy" software model, but Orca are gonna eat these guys for lunch. I'm mad at myself for not seeing this sooner.
 
potentillaCO32 said:
They are selling on ebay for 56 pounds. Not sure how official they are.
Click to expand...
I assume these are pirate copies.

You can pirate a Navonics microSD card for about £10 if you know how to do it. I won't share details here, but the SD stands for "secure digital" and that means that each card has a unique "magic number" that cannot be modified by the user - Navonics' charts are locked to the card using that number. There are chinese suppliers from whom you can order any number of SD cards with a magic number you've stipulated. Then you can clone the actual data files and they work.

Last time this came up it attracted some replies of "dd copy" or "special windows program that does blockwise copy". No, that doesn't work because the magic number isn't user writable. It's outside the block device and SD cards from major name-brand suppliers (SanDisc, Crucial etc) don't let you write it.
 
dunedin said:
That seems very odd as Garmin / Navionics website said (on one place re plotter compatibility table) to use Navionics Plus for Garmin plotters.
What model of Garmin chart plotter do you have. And hopefully the expert Paul will be along soon to clarify.
Click to expand...
The model is an echomap uhd2 7vs, and it only accept garmin navionics +, like the one paul posted, ( thank you Paul) not the navionics branded cards like the one Babylon posted.
 
PaulRainbow said:
You don't have to buy small charts to get UK coverage, buy a full UK chart.

Garmin plotters do not use Navionics charts. They either use Garmin charts or Garmin Navionics charts depending on the age/model of plotter. What is it that you bought ?

If it's a modern plotter full UK charts are £200 Garmin Navionics+ NSEU628L U.K. Ireland & Holland (010-C1271-20)
Click to expand...
Thats much more like it! Thanks Paul, I’ll get those. I was looking on garmins site and iit kept those well hidden from me, they don’t appear until page 3, very misleading if you are looking for uk charts.
I also see they do the entire baltic, and the entire west coast of europe and western med as one large chart area too. So my blood pressure is dropping :)
Mind you, c-maps website was even worse, I had to tell it where I was and a radius, not much use if I want to see their chart coverage of the med etc.
And then there was raymarine lightning charts…. Western coast of europe and the uk all for £99, what a difference!
 
If you look at some areas, eg, the USA, the cards are cheap. You can blame the UK government as they charge dearly for the source data whereas NOAA in the USA is funded by public money and the charts data is free open source for the public/chart producers.

Similar with aviation charts.

Whether you're happy purchasing counterfeit products to cheat the supplier is a personal decision.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top