South Pacific Charts - Digital or Paper ...

[bdurham]

im looking for a reasonably priced chartplotter that will give me in depth charts of the south pacific islands.
tahiti, fiji, micronesia, solomon islands etc.
I dont have the plotter yet, and i imagine that i will just need to purchase the right chip once i have the actual plotter. can anyone give me advice on a plotter. and also advice on how accurate and in depth their detail of some of these small islands and atolls will be?
is it safe to think that the charts will cover the vast majority of the islands in the south pacific. or should i be looking at getting paper charts for backups?

[osirissail]

There many different options for Chart Plotters for cruising the South Pacific but they all use the same source of charts. And the South Pacific charts are notorious for their errors and omissions. In areas where commercial shipping does not operate, whole reef/atolls/islands are missing or incorrectly positioned.
- - So much so that over the recent years cruisers in the South Pacific have been accumulating actual GPS lat/long's of such places. It is known as the "Penniped Waypoints" list.
- - It is important that you do chose a digital navigation system that allows you to add waypoints/marks/notes to the charts used by the navigation system. Then you would use the Penniped's Waypoints list to make corrections or additions to the displayed chart so you will have accurate locations to work with when it comes to uncharted hazards.
- - You can get a copy of the Penniped's waypoints list from several places. It is even included in some South Pacific and Central American guidebooks. Here are few of the URL's for the list.

Fantasia 35 Welcome

Pinniped's Waypoint list for the South Pacific

Waypoint for the South Pacific

[stevewrye]

bdurham,
We used the Garmin chart plotters on Hannah last time across and they were fine. I think most of the chart plotters work well and I'm doing research on our next system for the new boat. You should always have charts to back up the electronic systems for lots of reasons. We always went over our Bellingham 3/4 charts before leaving port. The 3/4 are black and white so Tracy and I separately went over charts with colored pens coloring anything of importance we found. Much easier to read a paper chart to find things that go bump in the night than finding them on a passage on the small screen. I also like the black and white because they really make you look carefully at the chart. The thing about any electronic chart is that one finds themselves always scrolling in and out worrying about what is 20 miles ahead of you because the good stuff does not show up unless you are zooming in and moving the plotter around a lot.
Osiressail, thanks for the links, I was wondering if I would find that information again. Great info, even though some of those waypoints are off or problems do not exist where they say they are I like knowing there could be something big close by.

[bdurham]

Originally Posted by osirissail

There many different options for Chart Plotters for cruising the South Pacific but they all use the same source of charts. And the South Pacific charts are notorious for their errors and omissions. In areas where commercial shipping does not operate, whole reef/atolls/islands are missing or incorrectly positioned.
- - So much so that over the recent years cruisers in the South Pacific have been accumulating actual GPS lat/long's of such places. It is known as the "Penniped Waypoints" list.
- - It is important that you do chose a digital navigation system that allows you to add waypoints/marks/notes to the charts used by the navigation system. Then you would use the Penniped's Waypoints list to make corrections or additions to the displayed chart so you will have accurate locations to work with when it comes to uncharted hazards.
- - You can get a copy of the Penniped's waypoints list from several places. It is even included in some South Pacific and Central American guidebooks. Here are few of the URL's for the list.

Fantasia 35 Welcome

Pinniped's Waypoint list for the South Pacific

Waypoint for the South Pacific

thanks for this list. its very informative.
its interesting to note however that the updated version has only been updated since 2000. wouldnt the new systems have incorporated these into their new charts by now? it seems like they should be updating all the time...?