"Phil Lewis" wrote:

I think MaxSea is top of the line if you interface the GRIB weather
forecaster with it for serious offshore passages. For coastal and inland
work, it is probably overkill.

Sort of depends too on what you use for charts. If you use C-Map, any of
the chartplotters are all you need (Raymarine, Smirad, Furnuno) I use
Raymarine interfaced with Radar and the Autopilot and it works great. I
don't use the Raymarine software.

Other people are very happy with Nobeltec. Good thing is, you can down load
trial versions of most of this stuff and try it.

I think the learning curve for these kinds of software is really
steep, and much of it will not carry over into another type of
software. My point is that downloading a version and trying it might
just be confusing.

We can do weather faxes off the SSB, but have never (since we don't
make long passages) really taken advantage of that, and haven't done
it more than once or twice.

We don't have a chart plotter as we skipped right over that type of
equipment, and use Capn on the laptop (attached to a GPS with an
external antenna up the mast) in the cockpit in the ICW. Works
wonderfully well for us, and would not want to be without it. We
always have a backup laptop. (really - sometimes two of them)

The support for Capn has been really good. I don't like Mosaic as
well as the previous versions, but when I got an updated OS (to
Windows XP on one of the extra computers I mentioned), I had to
upgrade. I had Windows 95 to begin with, and then Windows 98 and then
Windows Me, so I actually have 3 versions of Capn.


Kind of depends on what you are going to do. Long offshore passages would
make the MaxSea package very attractive. Get the OCENS WeatherNet package
to allow you to get weather and winds over the SSB or Sat phone. I assume
you are a sailor.

Phil

"Josh" wrote in message
...
I'm interested in interfacing my GPS unit with my laptop and utilizing
plotting software. I've looked at Maxsea wonder what other products people
have used and what they think of them.

Thanks



grandma Rosalie