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There are other reasons for data transfer, but enough background. These waypoints will not give you the actual currents-you need the Tidal Currents book for that-but they show where the data are available. So, again, we have value in looking up a list of these Canadian stations online and adding them to our onboard GPS, even when we have a display current option that says it includes Canadian currents. The Canadian data are copyrighted so they cannot be included in this list. The nuance is this: In Canadian border waters, most ECS will show current stations well into the Canadian waters, but these are only the U.S. With these waypoints showing along your route, you always know the closest current reference point. This can be very tedious for an extended trip, so obtaining a digital list of the stations online and converting them to waypoints the GPS can read is helpful. Other excellent programs do not have this feature, so we need to enter the stations by hand. Some electronic charting systems (ECS) include the tidal stations, so you can just press a button to show where the stations are and what the current is at the moment. For example, in areas affected by strong tidal current flow it is crucial to know where the closest current station is located. Then there are more nuanced reasons for waypoint transfer. In some remote parts of the world, however, the GE images might be notably more detailed than available charts, so it remains something to keep in mind for all vessels.Ħ. This might be an advantage for a small boat trip, going in and out of places that are not charted to the detail you want, but for a larger boat trip, it is generally best to do the layout on the RNC version of a nautical chart showing all navigation aids, because we want to coordinate our waypoints with nav aids when possible. In a pinch, you could also use GE to lay out your route and then export that in a format that can be imported to your onboard GPS. Needless to say, all we discuss here applies to a bike trip or hike as well as a voyage.ĥ. The GE display of your route on a satellite image gives a wonderful perspective of your travels. Google Earth (GE) makes it very easy to post a track or set of waypoints online that can be viewed privately by selected contacts or published to the public. You may want to share your voyage with a friend or the public by posting your route on the Internet. This calls for getting the saved track out of the onboard GPS and into your computer.Ĥ. After a cruise or race is over, you may want to document where you were and save it as a record for future use, or go back and see what you might have done right or wrong in a race. Also, with the data in a handheld, you can have several folks watching the navigation from the deck, and not rely on just the ship’s display screens.ģ. Racing or cruising, it could be crucial to be ready to go with the next waypoint and present tracking in case the main system fails. Once you have a set of waypoints in your onboard system, it is always valuable to back up the waypoints by installing the same route on at least one handheld GPS. In the next column, I will discuss the pros and cons of ENC vs. This is one more reason to lay the route out on a computer and then transfer it to the onboard system, because the internal charts of dedicated GPS systems are all vector-based. actual graphic image of the printed chart (called RNC, for raster navigation chart) rather than on a vector chart (called ENC, for electronic navigation chart). If I might insert here an easily defendable bias, the electronic route layout is usually best done with a “real e-chart,” i.e. Then, when your final list of waypoints is made and checked, you can transfer the list to your onboard navigation system using methods we discuss here.

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These programs (including many free or open source versions) have better graphics and view options than any dedicated onboard system, not to mention that many show tides and currents as a function of time to help plan the route. The easiest way to lay out a route is to select and then fine tune the waypoints on an e-chart program on your computer rather than enter them directly into the onboard GPS. There are many reasons these days to transfer navigation data among GPS and e-chart devices. Your best bet for nav data transfer (published November 2012)

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