Electronic Charts
Electronic charts make navigation easy.
Electronic charts (aka digital navigation charts) simplify navigation tremendously. They show your location in real time on a dynamic map, and make planning a route easy.
Electronic charts are digital versions of traditional government-issued paper charts, and all the data used to make them comes from the original National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), Canadian Hydrographics or other government sources.
Raster Charts versus Vector Charts
Raster charts are electronic images of paper charts. They are faithful copies of the paper versions, with the exact same detail of paper charts—with nothing added or taken away. Unlike raster charts, vector charts contain their information in a data file with various chart features located in layers that users can turn on or off.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Raster and Vector Charts
Because raster charts look exactly like the original paper charts, many boaters accustomed to the use of paper charts prefer raster charts. However, one disadvantage of raster charts is that they do not scale well, meaning that when you zoom in, text will appear overly large or if you zoom out, illegible. To partially correct for this problem, most chart software will switch to a larger or smaller scale chart of the area you want to view, depending on whether you are zooming in or out.
Most of the electronic charts West Marine offers are vector charts. Vector charts contain their information in a data file with various chart features located in layers that users can turn on or off. While (for those used to raster or paper charts) vector charts may require some time to get used to, they offer many advantages over raster charts. For example, they are extremely easy to update. All you need to do is download the latest data file. Vector charts also provide boaters with a wealth of information absent from raster charts. For example, depending on the navigational software you select, layers can include relief shading, 3D views, aids to navigation, contour lines, plus information about land-based features, satellite imagery, bathymetric data and much more. Another advantage of vector charts is that they scale well without the problems associated with raster charts.
Verify compatibility with your chartplotter.
West Marine sells four different brands of electronic navigation charts: Garmin, Navionics, C-Map and Humminbird. C-Map’s line of charts includes Reveal and RevealX Coastal cartography. Offered under the Navionics brand is Platinum, Platinum+, and Hot Maps cartography. Also available (under the Garmin brand) are Navionics+, Navionics Vision+ and the still popular Garmin g3 line of electronic charts. For inland anglers, Humminbird offers their Lakemaster and Lakemaster PLUS charts. Before selecting electronic charts, we suggest you determine exactly what features the cartography includes and that you verify compatibility with your chartplotter.