Navionics Navplanner... any good?

[johnt]

I really liked my Mapsource program with Bluecharts for managing my numbers from my Garmin on the PC. But now I have a Raymarine unit with a Navionics Gold card. Is the Navplanner program any good and worth the £80 cost?

[great white]

I use mapcreate for navionics, no detailed data shown on the maps

 

But it is good for transfering from plotter to PC and visa versa

 

I use it on a lowrance combined unit, but it does work on various units

Charlie

[johnt]

Thanks. I think Navionics have stopped selling Route Planner now and push their Nav+ service. So I think I'll try the Raymarine Voyage Planner s/w.

 

http://www.raymarine.co.uk/view/?id=3218

 

Just need to check it supports the Dragonfly.

[Steve S]

I used to use NavPlanner (for 3 years), I always thought it was rather noddy.

 

I currently use Raymarine Voyage Planner, it handles the raymarine waypoint and route file formats much better than NavPlanner. It allows you to hook up your laptop to the on boat WiFi in much the same way as the MFDs to share routes, waypoints and such like, I've never actually tried this feature though.

 

Using It

 

I keep my master set of waypoints (my precious) and routes on the Voyage Planner and regularly download updates to the on boat system.

 

New waypoints and routes (only the new ones) added while on the boat are copied up to the Voyage Planner master set. These are regularly backed to another disc as well as being on the boat.

 

The big benefit of doing this is security, accessibility and for me importantly the waypoint description field (there is also a comment field) on the Voyage Planner is very large so I can make loads of waypoint notes that the standard waypoint comment field on the plotter does not allow.

 

These detailed waypoint notes can be exported using one of the standard output formats to an alphabeticly ordered list which can be printed or saved as a PDF.

 

 

Steve