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Lamb Chops · 26-11-2015, 10:37

Hello,

I recently purchased a Garmin GPSMAP 7612 and consequently have been playing around with Bluechart Mobile to plan my course before heading out. I'm very familiar with Navionics and can't help comparing the two products.

First and most critically it seems that Bluechart mobile does not provide bridge height for most bridges (at least on the eastern seaboard). I called Garmin about this and they said the product DID report bridge heights but the tech was looking at bridges on the west coast and couldn't show me the height for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC! Navionics on the other hand does have this information and I'm amazed they would have left it out of Bluechart Mobile.

Navionics also now has the Auto-navigate function for free. You can do something similar on my Garmin chart plotter but I was VERY disappointed to find out that I had to purchase the G2 Vision charts to do this. The cost to be able to autonavigate with my garmin chart plotter for the eastern seaboard (Maine to Florida) was around $2K! While free on navionics!!!

Lastly, Navionics very clearly shows current direction and tide level in a VERY intuitive way on the charts. Bluechart Mobile sort of has this feature but the information that is automatically displayed does now show the tide level without going to another level (clicking on a tide reading point).

The GRIB weather info and Active Caption capablities of Bluechart are wonderful by the way so it isn't all bad!!

Given all these considerations I believe it were possible I would love to use Navionitcs to create my course and then upload this course to the Garmin 7612 but so far I have not been able to figure out how to do this... Thoughts?? BTW I have searched this forum for ideas of how to do this but so far have been striking out.

Thank you in advance for your ideas/thoughts!

Peter

wrwakefield · 26-11-2015, 11:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamb Chops

Hello,

...
Given all these considerations I believe it were possible I would love to use Navionics to create my course and then upload this course to the Garmin 7612 but so far I have not been able to figure out how to do this... Thoughts?? BTW I have searched this forum for ideas of how to do this but so far have been striking out.

Thank you in advance for your ideas/thoughts!

Peter

Hi Peter,

We also use both Navionics and Garmin Blue Chart [among several others...] on portable tablets and have come to the same conclusions you have.

One difference between us is our main nav system is a B&G Zeus running Navionics charts. [Cmap didn't become an option with B&G until the Zeus2 model...]

With that said, Navionics only needs to drop their own attempt at crowd sourcing [which contains no information for the regions we currently sail in...] and integrate Active Captain instead to become the leader from our perspective.

We still use Garmin Blue Chart as a 'live' navigation system to hand to our guests since the interface is so easy to use...

Answering your specific question about sharing routes between proprietary systems, there may be some hope: Active Captain recently announced a universal route sharing service. I haven't tried it yet, and don't know if Garmin and Navionics are on the list of vendors that have adopted the functionality yet; but here's hoping...

Cheers!

Bill

**a64pilot** · 26-11-2015, 12:57

Cmap will work on a Zeus touch. But you do have to have the right version of Cmap

Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum

colemj · 26-11-2015, 13:39

Regarding bridge heights, my Garmin Blue Chart app shows these clearly (the Ches bridge is 186', btw).

Near the bridge will be a blue bridge icon that looks like this: ][

Touch that and the information wheel comes up. Select the bridge icon and it will tell you all the information about it.

This worked for every bridge from MD to FL that I looked at.

Mark

Lamb Chops · 27-11-2015, 05:05

Wow! Mark, that is exactly the way I would think it would work! However I just looked at the Bay Bridge and no such icon I'm wondering if it has something to do with my default map options I have under chart options symbols set to NOAA and not IALA I just changed that and still didn't see the bridge icon so there must be something strange going on

Sent from my VS985 4G using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

DotDun · 27-11-2015, 05:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamb Chops

Wow! Mark, that is exactly the way I would think it would work! However I just looked at the Bay Bridge and no such icon I'm wondering if it has something to do with my default map options I have under chart options symbols set to NOAA and not IALA I just changed that and still didn't see the bridge icon so there must be something strange going on

Sent from my VS985 4G using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

Download the ActiveCaptain data.

colemj · 27-11-2015, 05:34

Oops, yep, I didn't realize that bridge symbol was part of the Active Captain data.

With AC turned off, you are correct - there doesn't seem to be any bridge data (at least for the Ches bridge).

Mark

DotDun · 27-11-2015, 05:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by colemj

Oops, yep, I didn't realize that bridge symbol was part of the Active Captain data.

With AC turned off, you are correct - there doesn't seem to be any bridge data (at least for the Ches bridge).

Mark

Which doesn't make any sense, but that's the way it works. Garmin forces one to join AC to get charted data that you purchased from Garmin.

Lamb Chops · 27-11-2015, 09:16

Okay! I'm still confused because I do have active captain enabled but I still don't see the symbol I will look again just to be sure, but I have noticed that the ActiveCaptain database takes an incredibly long time to load on my iPad 2 I'm purchasing a new iPad in the hopes that it works better because it clearly is an extremely useful capability that they've integrated into BlueChart mobile

Sent from my VS985 4G using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

colemj · 27-11-2015, 12:05

Make sure you have the "Local Knowledge" box checked in the AC options.

To get to the AC options, press the chart options icon and scroll down to AC.

Mark