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My boat has a Garmin GPSMap 525 chartplotter. Its microSD card holds BlueChart g2 Vision VEU468S, Södertälje–Trelleborg, for Sweden’s east coast. Two serious drawbacks. First, deep water is yellow, just like land, so I had to peer carefully at the screen every time. Second, beyond the wind farm the chart turns grey, making it useless in German and Danish waters.
I didn’t want to spend €300 on new charts. I also remembered that the plotter on the Marieholm 32 covered the whole Baltic. Some determined Googling led me to NaviTotal and a set of VEU721L charts from 2014, covering Belgium in the west, Russia in the east, and Svalbard in the Barents Sea to the north. Unfortunately, after installation the plotter showed nothing south of Aarhus, and the areas it did show still had yellow water. Searching the entire internet finally revealed the reason for the yellow: the ActiveCaptain computer application scrambles the colour scheme.
My second attempt was OpenSeaMap. Free charts, and very easy to download and install on my Garmin. You can even draw the area you want included before downloading. They’re detailed, with up-to-date buoys, beacons, marinas and structures. But no depth information: yellow land, blue water. At least it’s blue.
My third attempt was RuTracker. There I found the elusive HEU800X, matching VEU721L. Once installed, they gave me what I wanted. A quick comparison showed only small differences in depths from the current Navionics charts on my phone. I was pleased with the result.
#maintenance
I didn’t want to spend €300 on new charts. I also remembered that the plotter on the Marieholm 32 covered the whole Baltic. Some determined Googling led me to NaviTotal and a set of VEU721L charts from 2014, covering Belgium in the west, Russia in the east, and Svalbard in the Barents Sea to the north. Unfortunately, after installation the plotter showed nothing south of Aarhus, and the areas it did show still had yellow water. Searching the entire internet finally revealed the reason for the yellow: the ActiveCaptain computer application scrambles the colour scheme.
My second attempt was OpenSeaMap. Free charts, and very easy to download and install on my Garmin. You can even draw the area you want included before downloading. They’re detailed, with up-to-date buoys, beacons, marinas and structures. But no depth information: yellow land, blue water. At least it’s blue.
My third attempt was RuTracker. There I found the elusive HEU800X, matching VEU721L. Once installed, they gave me what I wanted. A quick comparison showed only small differences in depths from the current Navionics charts on my phone. I was pleased with the result.
#maintenance
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