London, ON
We have been looking for some software that we can use as a backup to the chartplotter in event of a breakdown. Not that we expect to need chartplotting in the midAtlantic but whenever we get close enough to run into an island or rock it would be nice to find the bits with deeper water.
Packages that display AIS info and Grib data usually have indigestible price tags at least for us poor folk.
For the past couple of days we have been using OPEN CPN, a piece of open source software available on SourceForge or from http://www.opencpn.org/. This does everything but integrate radar and it may even do that but we haven't tried.
We love it.
Having little to do each day other than act as a lab rats we have subjected the program to all sorts of tests and challenges which it might encounter in daily life aboard Meredith. We even gave it a stupid test and so far the software is rock solid.
The program is Open CPN. Try it. If you like it donate a few bucks to the open source resource.
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