ADDITIONAL DATA

Marine ENC's additional data comes on the Bonus Data Pack DVDs, which are included with the software. The discs include elevation data, street name overlays, landmark data based on the MPC Boaters Directory, and bathymetric depth data. Tide and current data is available to users utilizing Navionics chart cartridges.

The elevation data is used for 3D displays. Once you have the data loaded, simply choose File>Open>3D>Show 3D Window. You can seamlessly fly over this landscape using your mouse or a collection of 13 keyboard shortcuts. However, because many shorelines are relatively flat, this feature has limited value for boaters. Marine ENC has bathymetric data, but the depths do not display in 3D.

The Places Menu lets you search for cities and streets. As you zoom in on a chart, smaller street names continue to fill in. This street map overlay is handy for boaters, either to identify an anchorage (which are often at street ends) or to locate services using an address.

The MPC Boaters Directory of the U.S. is a searchable directory of 1.8 million places and 25,000 marine services. These can be plotted as an optional overlay on a chart. Because this directory is an advertising-based listing of marine services, and therefore not comprehensive, we generally don't rely on it.

Neither the street nor the directory data are as high in quality as one would find on a dedicated street atlas program or in the POI (points-of-interest) data contained in other marine-only software packages. But, if you have third-party BSB format charts, such as those from Maptech or NDI Digital Ocean, you can view their marine facilities and photo location data using Marine ENC.

Fugawi Marine ENC includes the ability to download and display GRIB weather data. Simply select ENC>Weather (GRIB)>Retrieve Data Via Email from the main menu and a window opens prompting you for the desired area and time. A GRIB file with data for surface wind, 500 millibar height, wave, surface temperature, or air temperature data will arrive immediately in your email inbox as an attachment.

Fugawi; Northpoint SystemsWe applaud vendors who leverage free Internet resources and Northport did just that. Here, a Google Earth side-by-side helps define a poorly-aided Bahamian channel.

Marine ENC recently provided a free Google Earth plug-in that lets you automatically download Google Earth images of your current location. A particularly nice feature is the split screen display, letting you view an aerial image–showing actual sandbars, channel openings, and coral reefs–next to a marine chart of the same area.

You'll need a fast Internet connection to download these images–Google Earth hogs bandwidth–but Marine ENC allows you to save them to your hard drive so they are ready to use later when underway. Waypoints and routes can be uploaded to Google Earth with a single mouse click, displaying your points on a satellite view. You can also send this data to others to communicate location or for use as a float plan.

In order to take advantage of Marine ENC's Google Earth feature, you need two free downloads: Google Earth–you must have version 4 or later–and the Fugawi plug-in (see links below).