I have used Fugawi with very limited experience. Take what follows for
for what it is worth.

When tooling around and with someone on the machine they are fine.

When trying to pick your way into a harbour, alone, at night, in fog,
they can take too much attention away from what is at hand. I turned
the damn thing off and concentrated on the radar. I also had a chart
plotter which I ended up constantly messing with.

Along with that you must remember that the charts are not always
accuratly alighed to lat/long. Nigel Calder explains far better than I
can but you can get 1/2 mile position "discrepencies". I have not
experienced it but have read of enough "events" to make me believe it.

However, I am getting ready to fuss with a different application that
may be of some interest.

Point 1. Fugawi lets you import images files, if you can geo-reference
the files then you can use them as "maps." I did this last year on a
road trip to Belize. Worked fine once I got the geo-reference right.

Point 2. Google Earth lets you download satillite images, with a
lat/long grid.

Point 3. Import Google Earth sat images into Fugawi and geo-reference
(calibrate.) Voile, drive/sail the photo.

No, they are not charts, but they should be able to give you confidence
that the charts are accurate and provide some additional info about what
the surrounding land looks like. I put some local area images on the
machine tonight and the laid right in over some saved track. You could
see where I drove up 95, went over a bridge, made my normal turns,
around the block and into my backyard. At least in Philly it appears to
be dead accurate.

I hope to cruise the south coast of Newfoundland this summer and there
are several interesting harbours I wish to visit that have well reported
"discrepencies" between chart and GPS lat/long. Hence my interest, to
validate my chart plotter when I can't see.

All that being said, its a cool toy. It may not be worth a damn on a
boat, alone, in the fog, at night.

Howard




Wayne.B wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 01:10:22 GMT, "John Glynn"
wrote:


I'm sort of used to navigating with paper charts and a pencil...but thinking
of moving a little higher-tech.

Been looking at PC Navigation Software. Looked at Chart Navigator Pro by
MapTech, the Ozi one, Fugawi and others.

I sure would appreciate users input on what they use, and what they like and
don't like about it.


I've been using MapTech Off Shore Navigator for a long time and it is
a pretty good package. I'm hearing a lot of good things about
OziExplorer however and am thinking of giving it a try.

http://www.oziexplorer.com/