February 29, 2012 — Portland, OR
If the phrase “chart cartridges” doesn’t mean anything to you don’t bother reading further. If it does, and your chart plotter uses Jeppesen data you will find the following pretty helpful.
Having become completely enthralled by Navionics, the thought of traversing the Caribbean without my best friend the chart plotter is beginning to give me the willies. The net of it is that I needed to buy chart cartridges to cover the entire Caribbean — that’s four chart cartridges at $200.00 a pop. Ouch! What was that about about BOAT = Break Out Another Thousand?
It turns out, however, that if you join Club Jeppesen (cost $85) you get one chart update for free. Further, if you have chart cartridges to trade, that drops the cost per cartridge to about $85. What this did for me and my 4 new cartridges is it cut an $800 bill to about $ 550 — a roughly 30% discount. Sweeeeeet!
While this isn’t price compettetive as the FREE NOAA raster charts that you can get using iNavx on an iPad, the benefits are that it integrates well with Otto the aoutopilot and give one the warm fuzzy feeling that one knows where one is.