MaxSea, one of the big daddies of the charting software world is turning is turning 12. Version 12, that is. The company is actually 20 years old, which demonstrates good staying power for a software company, and their extremely feature rich products are favorites among professional mariners, not to mention serious offshore sailors like Ellen MacArthur. And recently they’ve hooked up with Furuno to provide radar and depth sounder integration, and sharing of charts, waypoints, and routes between the ship-board computer and a Furuno integrated navigation display. And there’s some really advanced functionality for monitoring AIS, or even special radio equipped buoys that some commercial fishing outfits use. However, the features that impress me the most are related to 3d bathymetry. E.g., you can use your sounder to paint the “real” bottom depth onto a chart. If you wanted to voyage around the world doing chart guides, this would be a great tool to have. Another neat bathymetric feature is a “look-ahead” view which shows a record of the depth reported by the sounder behind boat, and the predicted depths ahead of the boat. But the feature that put MaxSea on the map, so to speak, is their routing software, which predicts the fastest, safe routes given the current and predicted weather. Best of all, the weather data is free to owners of the product, and the files are small enough to download over HF radio or satphone. For some voyagers, that might make it all worth it.
Link: www.maxsea.com
