petedg
Well-Known Member
Does anyone have a recommendation for an intuitive, easy to use, comprehensive passage planning and navigation software. I was thinking to try Opencpn and purchase charts for the North Germany and the Baltic, any comments?
PC Navigation Software
- Thread starter petedg
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Nostrodamus
Well-Known Member
Neptune is pretty good for passage planning and you can try it out with a free trial.
markdj
Well-Known Member
I used to use software on board with cmap max charts but their updates were few and far between so I switched to the more user friendly OpenCPN. Only issue is the cm93 charts don't have as much tidal info.
Robin
Well-Known Member
I have OpenCPN, Seaclear11, Tsunamis (old) and Neptune's C-Map card reader version.
OpenCPN is superb and especially so as it is free to download. In our case our interest is in USA waters and Uncle Sam kindly allows us to download either raster or vector charts also free of charge, but of course for US waters only. I do have CM93 worldwide but only for academic interest because our next adventures are in the USA. OpenCPN however does not have the planning capability in terms of predicting optimum departure times, course to steer predictions and so on as do other programs, Neptune included.
Neptune uses tidal stream data (you have to buy the tide data for the chosen area of use) but only for British and French waters, and uses it to calculate optimum route times, course to steer and time taken etc, as well as predicting a ground track. It is a very quick and easy to use tool for trip planning and with GPS attached is a plotter also, in C-Map form using the same charts you would use on a dedicated plotter. Neptune also displays AIS if you have one to connect to it.
I don't know the other more expensive planning programs, others will no doubt comment on them.
OpenCPN is superb and especially so as it is free to download. In our case our interest is in USA waters and Uncle Sam kindly allows us to download either raster or vector charts also free of charge, but of course for US waters only. I do have CM93 worldwide but only for academic interest because our next adventures are in the USA. OpenCPN however does not have the planning capability in terms of predicting optimum departure times, course to steer predictions and so on as do other programs, Neptune included.
Neptune uses tidal stream data (you have to buy the tide data for the chosen area of use) but only for British and French waters, and uses it to calculate optimum route times, course to steer and time taken etc, as well as predicting a ground track. It is a very quick and easy to use tool for trip planning and with GPS attached is a plotter also, in C-Map form using the same charts you would use on a dedicated plotter. Neptune also displays AIS if you have one to connect to it.
I don't know the other more expensive planning programs, others will no doubt comment on them.
