Background. The world of electronic charting has seen a severe transformation in the recent past. First, NOAA released vector charts of U.S. waters free of charge to the public. These are called Electronic Navigation Charts (ENCs). Now they have done the same thing with Raster Navigation Charts (RNCs). These actions have changed the revenue and profit picture for many companies who produced such charts on their own, or who produced charting software that ran their proprietary charts.

What kind of charts to use? It used to be that people made a selection of a particular charting program based upon the attributes of that program such as ease of operation, seamless handling of charts, and many other bells and whistles. They then bought the charts to go with the program. Now many people are first selecting the Government?s free charts, and then selecting a program to run them.

Which Electronic Charting Program to use?

There are a myriad of programs available such as: Maptech, Nobeltec, Jeppesen, Coastal Explorer and Mac ENC. There isn’t room for us to describe all of these programs for you, so we have picked 2 programs for your consideration. These are Fugawi and Mac ENC.

Fugawi is a good value for PCs, works with almost any chart you can imagine, and has the widest integration across platforms including many PDAs. It has every modern attribute imaginable, and more are added almost on a monthly basis.

Mac ENC is a professional solution for those who appreciate the superior performance of Mac computers. It works with all the ENCs and raster format BSB charts. This is not an "also ran" program that Mac users have grown accustomed to, but a serious feature-laden program.