Window shopping

After almost two hours of online “window” shopping yesterday, my results on a chartplotter upgrade and electronic charts were inconclusive. Katana came with a Garmin 182, an older model greyscale chartplotter which has since been discontinued. Although we have charts for it for our current cruising area, Lake Ontario, we will need to invest some $$$ in charts for it to be of any real use to us down south. How much do charts cost? Notice I didn’t just use one dollar sign in that previous sentence!!!

Do we need a new chartplotter? No, in fact we don’t need any chartplotter at all. We do however need some form of charts, whether they be digital or paper (most would say you need paper charts even if you primarily use digital for day-to-day navigating). In my research yesterday I found a much newer model Garmin chartplotter, which had itself just been replaced by some newer models, that supposedly comes with US and Bahamas charts already installed on it! Even though discontinued I do see some still available online. Decisions, decisions. Given how electronics advance these days I don’t think we’ll be getting any new chartplotter until closer to our departure date, unless Santa decides to put one under our tree. As for charts, we’re going to keep looking at our options. It would be nice to find digital charts, if they exist, that will work on our chartplotter (new or old), our handheld Garmin 76cx GPS and our new computer navigation program, GPSNavX.