[rcassano]

At the Annapolis Boat Show I asked the Navionics people if I could use the SD card reader built into my PC laptop to read the Navionics card and the answer was no. They said the Navionics SD cards will only function in their dedicated reader or in the slot of a chartplotter dedicated to Navionics charts. During the summer I found the free vector charts, downloaded from the gov web site, seriously lacking data in remote coastal areas in Maine. I had to switch over to Raster charts in order to navigate these areas. This started me on the search for what was offered by Navionics. I believe the Navionics card reader acts like the license so the card/reader can be used on any PC. For a cruiser this allows for a quick computer change if the primary should fail.

It would be nice if we could plug in the Navionics reader into a Mac and read the charts on MacEnc.