PING: Jack Erbes...

Hi Jack,

Do you know off hand the status of the Garmin Blue
Charts? I understand they did a recall of all of
them recently because they were considered unsafe
to use but I've heard of no follow-up.

Brian

Pegleg wrote:

I know what you can figure out from the web pages. You can still buy
the regular BlueChart charting and there are no issues with it. That
flavor of BlueChart is no longer sold on CD-ROMs and must be purchased
on preprogrammed memory cards.

Garmin has three saltwater BlueChart products now. They are:

BlueChart - Packed with detailed offshore marine maps for a great day on
the water.

BlueChart g2 - Detailed offshore marine maps to help you navigate — plus
enhanced 3-D maps and rich detail and content.

BlueChart® g2 Vision - Highly detailed offshore marine maps, plus
satellite imagery, enhanced 3-D maps, Auto Guidance technology, aerial
photographs and coastal roads with points of interest.

The recall issue is only with the 2009 g2 and 2009 g2 Vision versions of
BlueChart and is explained here:

http://www8.garmin.com/bluechartrecall/

The issue is "..inaccuracies and/or omissions in the way that this
specific version of charting represents depth contours and depth areas..."

You can still buy g2 and g2 Vision in the 2008.5 version.

It sounds to me like the issue is that, if you look at and navigate by
the simulated 3-D graphic representations of the bottom contours on a
chart plotter, it is possible that you could run aground or something.

I'm still a charts (paper and electronic) guy and I use the soundings on
the charts, fathometer readings, and common sense to stay in safe water.
Some of the newer offerings for navigation seem like eye candy to
me. In the end, when you get in shallow waters, I still think I want to
see myself from a overhead plan view and surrounded by more water than I
need.

Maybe I'm a dinosaur...

Jack