As a newbie with electronic charts, I have been playing around with the free
NOAA charts, using one of the free ENC readers.

As far as I could tell, this combination would be OK if all I wanted was the
"offshore" charts...but not much else (I apologize if I have missed anything
here...but that's how it appears)... but

then I finally "stumbled" on the combination of Maptechs free Chart
Navigator 5.07 (available at
http://www.maptech.com/support/doc.c...id=123&plid=39 )

and the free boating charts also available on the Maptech site
(https://secure.maptech.com/productre...in=1&chartdl=1
....and this was a real eye opener. A full featured chart reader that can be
linked to my hand held GPS and the latest (September 2005) charts...

I downloaded/installed the combo on my laptop which will now go onboard the
boat as a backup for the Raymarine chartreader...

Nice free X-mas present from NOAA/Maptech!!!

Cheers,
cvj