Saw the latest West
Marine flyer, and there was a big ad for
Raymarine on the back cover. Despite my assumption that consumer grade
GPS chartplotter's begin and end with
Garmin, I took a look at the low end
Raymarine Dragonfly (5.7 inch display). It looked pretty nifty and
Anchor express had it for under $500 without
charts.
So I m thinking, aha, that's where they get you! And in fact the biggest reason I have used
OpenCPN and not bought a full honest to goodness dedicated
chartplotter for mounting by the
wheel was the lock-in to proprietary
charts. It seems that Raymarine Lighthouse charts (raster and vector) are free!
Select Raster or Vector Charts
I think this may be the year I buy a real
chartplotter. Does anyone have experienc with these units, or the Lighthouse charts? Maybe they are easily generated from free NOAA charts (Raymarine cautions that Lighthouse charts are not updated as quickly as NOAA charts).