When Venice’s shallow-water reds turn a blind eye to your offerings, travel a little farther north.
Hey Capt. Paul:
I inherited a copy of Maptech’s Offshore Navigator 5.01, and am wondering if I can use it in my Magellan Marine Gold model by adjusting the datum in the GPS.
There is also a datum calculator in Offshore Navigator, but that’s all I know.
I presently use Magellan’s topo, but the Offshore Navigator is a lot better. A distributor for Garmin stated that it couldn’t be used in his product.
Any ideas??
Thanks,
Ray
Capt. Paul’s response:
The Garmin rep is correct. The Maptech Offshore Navigator is the best mapping software on the market today, but you can’t load it into your Magellan GPS unit. You can, however, use the program and its outstanding features on the water in a variety of ways.
Offshore Navigator software turns your PC into a chartplotter displaying your real-time vessel position and key navigation information. The only additional requirement is to connect an industry-standard NMEA 0183 GPS to the computer in which you have the program installed. Your Magellan GPS receiver unit can meet that requirement.
The program is especially adaptable to a laptop computer that you can bring aboard your vessel, but can also be used as a trip planner and map producer without ever going near the water. In both modes, Offshore Navigator performs in an exceptional manner.
Offshore Navigator is Maptech’s most advanced PC navigation program. The program combined with the Maptech Digital ChartKit 2005 offers the navigator all of the latest marine NOAA-type charts available in the covered region.
In the U.S., Maptech charts have the same high level of detail as NOAA paper charts. NOAA is the national hydrographic office of the United States, and Maptech is the only company that produces NOAA-certified digital charts.
These Maptech Digital ChartKits (NOAA charts) are sold by regions. Digital ChartKit 2005 is the latest version, and as such includes all of the latest issued NOAA charts for that region. There are 14 such regions that cover the eastern seaboard of the United States; among those is Region 17.
The Maptech Region 17 covers the area of the Gulf of Mexico from Mobile Bay to Mexico. With the program, you can view the NOAA-type charts, USGS topographic maps that cover the water’s edge to five miles inland with contiguous map coverage as well as Ortho-corected, overhead navigation photos that match chart positions exactly and provide a useful aid in understanding charts.
You can view them full-screen or side-by-side with charts. Region 17 has about 150 NOAA charts, and that is not even counting the USGS topo and the aerial navigation photos that are in the program. That amount of paper mapping would cost you thousands of dollars to obtain. Yet you have paper mapping by simply printing the computer-generated maps on your computer printer.
Offshore Navigator allows you to view the charts, maps and aerials, place markers (waypoints) and configure routes and tracks at any point on the screen. All of this is accomplished with a simple mouse click on your computer.
In addition, the program contains the Official Tide Stations that allow you to view the tide for any day within the year as well as see tide graphs for these locations.
Naturally all of the charts, maps and photos, as well as the current tide graphs, can be printed on your standard home or office computer printer.
Now here is the best part. You can also upload all of your waypoint, track and route data from your GPS receiver into the Offshore Navigator program.
That means you can view your waypoints, routes and track back data as an overlay on any of the charts, topos or aerial photos included in the region mapping. You can actually “see” on the aerial photos or maps where you were on that last trip.
That means you can use the Offshore Navigator as a waypoint data manager by saving all of your on-the-water, GPS-entered data into a file for future reference. The only configuration you need is to be sure that your GPS and the Offshore Navigator are configured for the datum (WGS 84) and position format (DDD, MM.mmm), thus ensuring that your computer-plotted positions are transferred to the GPS in the proper format.
You can download all of the waypoint, track and route data into more than nine specific brands of GPS receivers as well as the generic NEMA formats.
Being you “inherited” the program, I suggest you get the updated version of both the mapping (Digital ChartKit 2005) and the current version of Offshore Navigator (Version 5.06).
The Digital ChartKit 2005 has all of the current tide stations as well as the latest official mapping of that region.
The Offshore Navigator version 5.06 offers sufficient improvements over your 5.01 version that it is worthwhile downloading it from the Maptech internet site (www.maptech.com or to get straight to the support site go to http://www.maptech.com/support/doc.cfm?docid=287&plid=50&CFID=918364&CFTOKEN=88660853).
Please excuse me for being so long-winded, but Offshore Navigator, Digital ChartKit and Terrain Navigator Pro are the programs I use exclusively to plot my waypoints, routes and tracks for my personal use as well as determining positions for all of my readers. I can’t say enough about their accuracy, ease of operation, area of coverage and very fine detail.
So to finally answer your question, no you cannot download the actual Offshore Navigator Digital ChartKit maps into your Magellan Meridian Gold — for that you need the Magellan MapSend mapping software — but you can download all of the Offshore Navigator waypoints, routes and tracks as data into your Magellan GPS.
And you can use the Maptech Offshore Navigator as I do, as and waypoint-plotter, a route-planner, a recorder of GPS receiver-marked waypoints and tracks, as a data manager by saving data to backed-up computer files and as a “Take On Board” paper map producer by printing color maps on a computer printer and either laminating them or using a 2-gallon zip bag to make them waterproof.
You can contact Maptech on the web at www.maptech.com or via telephone at (888) 839-5551.
If I may be of any other assistance to you, please don’t hesitate to contact me again.
Capt. Paul Titus is Louisiana Sportsman’s GPS expert. To ask him a question, go to www.louisianasportsman.com.