Looking to help a friend go to Mexico/Sea of Cortez in the next couple of weeks. Just figured I’d purchase charts through CE. Seems to be broken, and for quite a while. Any solutions? What are people using instead? Forum topics are pretty dated.
I’ve been using CE for many years and loving it, but activity seems to be slowing, is everything OK there?
I too have been using CE for many years. I invested in Canadian and Mexico charts. I had C-Map for Mexico and south, but they are now gone. I moved to mobile version and cannot access my Canadian or Mexico charts. I am looking at changing to Navionics… so I feel your pain! I hope that Rose Point mobile version will once again support C Map down the road and allow more than only US charts for their mobile version. I tested out Navionics mobile. One chart set included Alaska south to the souther tip of Baja Mexico. So that will save me a lot of money for the annual subscription prices of the chart sets. I hate the subscription model for long-distance voyaging. I am dusting off my old-school practices of paper charts and Coast Pilots.
Hi duetinsea,
Early last year, C-MAP’s licensing server went down due to some kind of incursion/hack. They have not yet been able to bring it back.
Try contacting C-MAPs support department; others have been able to purchase C-MAP charts directly from C-MAP.
It’s a big inconvenience, but we can do nothing here if and until C-MAP gets that server running again.
Hi TenderSpirit,
A clarification on what you wrote:
The mobile apps (iOS, Android) have never had C-MAP charts. We’ve only ever had USA charts from NOAA, but we are working towards British Columbia and others for the future.
Yes, very true. I used your laptop version with C-map and was really disappointed that we can only have US charts on mobile. I love the routing much better with RosePoint and the flexibility to add my routes to the plotter. When you are able to do that with mobile for international charts…. That will be outstanding. Thanks so much for your response. I absolutely love the laptop version!!!
Well, I ended up using the Navionics “Boating” app for this trip, but it’s really quite limited. Sure wish I could have used Coastal Explorer for this. Perhaps the MBTiles format could be explored? Perhaps in “LABS”?
Coastal Explorer is still my preferred navigation software, but since MX is going to be my new cruising grounds, I may try OpenCPN?
Well, I’m going again in a couple of weeks to crew on the Baha Haha. Just for fun I tried the “store” again for this trip, and it worked! I’ve been able to download and install the CMAP chart for the area through the Rose Point/Coastal Explorer store.
Glad it’s working again, now to see how accurate the charts are when we’re underway. Great news.
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Just a follow up on this topic… I used the CMAP charts (that I was able to install last month) for the Baja Haha and did some casual comparison with the Navionics charts that were on the chartplotter and my Ipad. I didn’t notice any issues, although the Haha is a straight forward and pretty well known route. But I really appreciated have CE available and used it quite a bit for departure and arrival planning.