Putting your charts up on a PC is great for planning and (if your boat’s big enough!) on-board use. But it’s also a serious pain in the rear: most charting programs are incredibly complex, take hours to install, and days to figure out. Not so, with Fugawi’s latest Marine ENC version (4.5.2). When I gave this program a test-run I found it to be among the easiest of the software packages out there. I’ve spent a lot of time—weeks, in fact—fighting with marine navigation software. (Check out Fisheye View: Using Bathymetrics, in our Tactics & Techniques section, for the whole story.) Fugawi too me about an hour to install, and about one more hour to figure out basic functions and features. That’s pretty darn low on the frustration scale, for a computo-phobic mariner like me. But part of the Fugawi’s strength (simplicity) is also part of its weakness (simplicity). The 3-D view in this program is only the “folded map” type, which essentially bends a picture of a chart over the landscape. Some more complex programs give a more realistic 3-D view. Otherwise, the program’s functions are more or less on par with its competition: route planning and navigation, feature/nav aid data, waypoint, route, and track storage and transfer, multiple chartography compatibility, night vision mode, GPS auto-detect, and chart printing functions are all part of the program. Marine ENC doesn’t include the shipboard-management sections that some programs include, which is a real blessing because cramming all that stuff into a nav program makes it nearly impossible to use half the time. Thanks, Fugawi, for resisting the temptation to jam in all those additional but rarely used functions that just clutter things up. You have Navionic’s Platinum+ chart cards, and you want to see that data on-screen? Most older chartography programs won’t be able to handle it, but here’s where Fugawi really excells. The program comes with a card reader, and using it is as simple as pulling the chip out of your GPS, plugging it into the reader, and attaching the reader’s USB to your computer. System requirements are Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, 512 MB RAM, 250 MB hard drive space, a DVD drive, and graphics accelerator. The list of GPS compatibility is long and includes most major brands, and Marine ENC will also support real-time navigation with any GPS with NMEA V2.1 or better. The program comes with nautical planning (low-data) charts for the country, details over 25,000 marine service locations and searchable place names, and elevation/bathymetrics data of the US. Bonus Feature: It also includes Fugawi Street Overlay, so you can use this program for landlocked navigation as well as waterborne fun. Double-Cool Bonus Feature: Go to their web site and you can download a 10-day temporary demo version, to find out if it’s what you want. Price: MSRP $280 The Highs: It’s a very simple program to use. The Lows: 3-D function isn’t as helpful as some. Who Wants It: Someone who has Navionics Platinum+ and wants to have computer planning/navigation capabilities. Contact: www.fugawi.com.
Contact FishingGearGuru by e-mailing lr@geareduppublications.com. All rights reserved by Geared Up, LLC, 2009
