Ray Marine Charts

There are a lot of chart makers out on the market now and I have used paper charts and electronic charts, both have their pros and cons. Before we left Sweden, we were given the opportunity to use Raymarine charts. I have been wanting to do a write up on the Raymarine Charts for a while but I also wanted to use the charts for a good amount of time before writing up any review. We have been using the charts for the last 6 months and for those that are impatient to know how I feel about the charts, I have to say that I like the charts and the way the chart data is presented. With that said, there are some cons that deal mostly with the chart store.

• On full disclosure, Raymarine gave me two SD cards so that I could try out the charts for a write up of what I thought.

Charts

Pros

After using the charts to navigate through the UK, Spain and Portugal, I must say that I like the way the charts are setup and the information that they provide. During our sail through the above countries, we were also using Navionics on my Ipad so that we could compare and make sure both were showing the same details and that things such as rocks were in the same spot. I did not want to see one chart showing a rock in a certain spot and the other chart showing it somewhere completly different.

Below are some screen shots from the plotter so that you can see how the Raymarine charts look and the information that they have. In pic 1 you can see some of the info regarding buoys and their flashing sequence. Remember that these screen shots are not completely zoomed in, so the more you zoom in, more detailed information you will get.

In pic 2, the red arrow is pointing to a tidal marker for the area. I really like this since I can see directly how much tide there is and if the tide is rising or falling. If you click on it you get a summary box displaying all the tidal information. If you click on the summary box, you get pic 3. Pic 3 shows all the tidal information for the day and the next coming days. This allows you to check on the tides real quick and easy so that you can avoid any unpleasantries of sitting high and dry at low tide.

In some parts of the world, there can be some really strong currents due to tides. Raymarine charts provides this information as well. Pic 4 provides a view of the current information. As with the rest of the info that the charts provide, it is simply clicking on the chart symbols to see the summary info box and then clicking on the summary box to get the page with more in depth info.

Cons

This is not a con but I thought I should mention it. If you are zoomed out and then zoom in really tight to your position, it can take a second or two for all the chart data to appear. I think that this could be due to the plotter not being that fast or it needs to render a lot of data which takes time. This also brings me to a problem that comes with using digital charts, the zoom level. The farther out you are zoomed, the less detail you will see. So it is important to make sure you zoom in enough to see all the details you need for that particular area. If not, you could run into something and ruin your day.

Cons

Chart Store

Pros

Choosing charts

To choose the charts that you want, you simply go into the chart store and move the map around until the position pin is on the country/region that you want. When I first tried out the chart store in June/July 2022, there were not many charts to choose from and you could only select specific countries. Now checking in Jan. 2023, it seems that Raymarine updated this and now you are able to select bigger regions such as Western Europe vs just being able to select a specific country.

List

I like being able to see a list of the charts that have been purchased and I think the chart store does a good job of this. Under My Charts I can see the list of all the charts that were purchased, the voucher number used to purchase that particular chart, when the subscription expires and when there is an update.

Combine Charts

I like the option to combine your charts onto one SD card instead of having each country/region on its own seperate SD card. You will not have to switch cards that often in your plotter and you can group countries together depending on where you are going to sail. For example you can have Spain and Portugal on one SD card.

Cons

• Choosing Charts
  • I think a major con to the chart store is that currently you need to buy a voucher. The only way to get a voucher that I know of now, is to go into a retail store that sells Raymarine and purchase a chart packet. This packet will contain the voucher number and the SD card. Once you have this, then you will be able to input the voucher number, select the chart you want and download it to the SD card. No way to do all this online as far as I know.
  • Another con is the amount of charts that are currently available. As you can see in the screenshot, only the US, Western Europe and Austrailia are currently available. All of South America, most of the Carribean and South Pacific are not yet available. Hopefully these areas will become availble soon.
• Combine Charts
  • When I was combining regions and trying to download them, I was only able to combine at most 3. That is all that would be allowed onto the SD card even though the card had plenty of room. But now, after updating my charts, Raymarine coverted my Spain and Portugal charts to Western Europe so I am not sure if the 3 country limit is still there or not.
• Chart file preparation
  • After you have selected chart data and assigned it to your SD card, a chart file is prepared for download. The preparation time depends on the size and number of regions and detail areas. This can take anywhere from 15-60 minutes. Then you still need to download the file which can another 10-60 minutes. I am not sure what is happening during the prep time but it would be good if they could do away with that step.