Austin
It's been a number of years since cruising the SP but on my last trip we had a collection of various charts (French, US, NZ, AUS, BA) and in addition used the 2/3 Bellingham charts. We found them to be just as good as any other we used. Even with the larger size charts we always had a stamp magnifier at hand. So yes the Bellingham charts worked fine. With that said we found some charts had more detail in specific areas than others. For example we found the BA charts to be much better for
Fiji than others.
On this trip (departed 2005) we have been sailing Central and
South America we have been using
openCPN with cm93 and cm95 charts. In addition we are also using GE2KAP program to creat
Google earth charts. We have found
Opencpn used with GE chartlets to be terrific. Both programs are free and so easy to use. This method has allowed us to get into places where regular charts are lacking detail. In addition we are using a
Furuno chart plotter(CMap) and
INavX on our
ipad. Of all the above mentioned hands down OpenCPN wins out for its ease of use, being able to create our own charts and over all versatility.
We are also from the
school to have paper charts onboard just in case but to be honest it's a backup for us.
Safe sailing and good luck. See you in the SP this coming season
Chuck
Jacaranda
Sent from my
iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum
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