It’s a decent chartplotter, but you have to change charts manually as you cruise-the electronic equivalent of pulling the next one from the chart drawer. The iSail GPS app costs $8 with raster-scan NOAA charts for the U.S. If I were using it every day, I’d probably have both apps, fully charted-up, on my iPad. I slightly preferred the Navionics app from a user standpoint, but for my short cruise with Steve, not enough versus the Garmin to spend the extra $20. The Navionics app is also free, and includes usable charts, but getting the most from it means investing $50 for the U.S. But on a small boat, it’s still subject to theft, and you can’t take it home to set up waypoints and routes for your next cruise, or just to play with.
But you can pump in almost any NMEA 2000 data like AIS, depth, engine gauges, and more, and Ethernet feeds from Garmin radars, fishfinders, and so forth, making the GPSMAP 7607 a fully functioning member of the nav station.
It’s at the low end of the price range for color plotters, and its display doesn’t match the size, color, and definition of the iPad. Garmin’s nice GPSMAP 7607, with a 7-inch color touchscreen, lists for $1,500, including BlueChart g2 charts.
If you already own the tablet, you’re talking peanuts here compared to investing in a comparable standalone plotter. A nav app will let your iPad use the same charts as a “real” plotter uses, receive signals from the same GPS satellites, and calculate positions with the same accuracy, at least if you add an external GPS receiver (around $100 for one that’s perfectly adequate, and $200 for a fully featured Bluetooth model). (There are nav apps for Android tablets, too look for them on Google Play.) Most apps are free, but charts cost extra even so, a full-featured app with complete charts of the U.S. Garmin’s BlueChart Mobile helps route planning with loads of information.īefore casting off to meet Steve I stopped at the Apple App Store, where searching for “marine navigation” brought up many apps for chart plotting, some with names we all recognize, including Garmin and Navionics.
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