Advice needed on next steps with electronic navigation resource

[Sailmon]

After 33 years of daysailing & vacationing on Great Lakes, we finally dropped dock lines and headed for salt water July of 2017. First year was amazing - Lake Erie to Florida, Bahamas, Keys and Florida West Coast - now on the hard for hurricane season in Port Charlotte. (If curious about route, tracking map is on our blog at herdiamond.net). My question is about navigation resources. We really enjoyed navigating with Garmin Blue Chart mobile on our iPad. We especially liked having Active Captain integrated in the nav software. We also had a Raymarine ES78 on board with Navionics - but used it mainly alongside iPad for radar & AIS (and of course as back up to Blue Chart). Looking ahead, the problem is that Garmin will no longer be supporting or updating Blue Chart Mobile. We would really like to continue to use a primary chart plotter resource with Active Captain integrated - we found it nice for anchorages & marinas, AND critical for hazard markers and advice. We spoke with Raymarine tech support and they thought that Active Captain was not integrated on Navionics, but might be integrated on C-Maps which I could use on the Raymarine plotter. Future cruising will be in Florida, Bahamas and Caribbean. I appreciate your thoughts on options for going forward.
Thanks,
Bob

[Mediator]

I have heard that ActiveCaptain functionality is being dropped from many major platforms. Even if it is supported now, it might not be in a year.

Our primary navigation is iNavX on our iPad loaded with Navionics. It's cheaper than any chart plotter and has far more functionality (besides radar). We then access ActiveCaptain online when we're close to shore.

[GrowleyMonster]

Best bang for the buck, a refurb Note3 running OCPN. Get two. Raspberry Pi is a good value, as well, with OCPN. A laptop? Install Ubuntu, kick the WinDOHs habbit, and install OCPN. Did I happen to mention that I like OCPN? It's free, too, and you can't get your charts "updated" off your phone. For US waters BTW, you can get free charts, so the app, charts, and OS are all free. But if you are stuck on WinDOHs, you are still in luck because OCPN can run on that POS OS as well. Don't know about Mack. Won't install on an i-thing even if it is rooted/jailbroke.



CM93 charts will play on OCPN, and most other charts as well. And you can scan paper charts and then georeference them for use in OCPN. You can even convert Google Earth images for use in OCPN but of course you won't have the navaids or hdrrographic data. Sometimes just knowing where the water is very pale blue and where it is very dark blue is good enough. Sometimes it isn't. On the Bahama banks you will want the best charts available and even then you are likely to discover an uncharted coral head the hard way if you aren't careful. I could say "just don't go there" but it is beautiful and a fairly shoal draft boat just NEEDS to spend some time on the banks.