EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part three of a weekly series on computer-based navigation software and electronic charting. For more about this series and why we wrote it, please see our Room 13 blog.

There is good news for boaters who want to test the waters in the ever-growing market of navigation software. Two companies provide free programs-one a simple chart viewer and the other a complete electronic chart system-that can be used to experiment and learn much, at very little cost.

CARIS's Easy View and Sping's SeaClear II are applications that display digital chart files on your laptop. By combining one of these free downloads with free raster or vector charts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, you can create a simple electronic chart system that can teach you a great deal about computer-based navigation and answer the question, "Is this right for me?"

However, the adage ¯you get what you pay for" does apply. Although both programs are impressive for products created without a paying customer base, they are not the free equivalent of the feature-rich, sophisticated commercial software packages that dominate the market.CARISEasy View displays raster charts in NOAA's BSB format.

The freeware offered by CARIS, which is a chart viewer rather than a full navigation package, and Sping, which is more full-featured, have very different capabilities, which evolved from the different interests and intents of the people who created them. But both lack many of the popular features offered by their commercial cousins. They can also be difficult to use, at least by modern standards, and both companies offer comparatively little in the way of documentation and customer support.

But they do present a relatively simple way to get started in computer-based navigation and electronic charting-and the price is certainly right!

CARIS EASY VIEW

To understanding CARIS Easy View you must first understand the company. CARIS was founded in 1979 by a survey engineering professor from the University of New Brunswick who worked on digital mapping programs in the basement of his home with his students. Its first commercial software product was called CARIS, which stood for Computer Aided Resource Information System.

Today, CARIS is a multinational company with offices in the U.S., Australia and Canada. It develops software that stores and manages hydrographic data for use with paper or digital charts, often working under contract for federal agencies. For example, NOAA uses a CARIS application to update and create its Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs). CARIS's software is also used in agriculture, geology, forestry and transportation.

CARIS created its original viewer, called EasyENC, so non-CARIS users could display their marine and hydrographic data products. Like its predecessor, Easy View is simply a viewer and not a full-featured navigation package. But it is an incredibly flexible viewer, able to display 18 data formats, including hydrographic data and 3D flight paths. It just so happens that two of these file formats BSB/KAP files and S-57 files-are of great use to recreational boaters. These are the file types associated with nautical charts in raster and vector formats.

CARIS may be the most surprised of all at how recreational boaters have discovered Easy View. Sheri Flanagan, the marketing coordinator at CARIS, estimates an average of 625 people download Easy View each month and that as many as a third of those are recreational boaters.

SETTING UP

Easy View can display the most common chart formats for U.S. boaters, but because it is only a viewer, you must obtain chart files from another source. You can download free raster or vector charts directly from NOAA, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offers free vector charts for inland waters known as IENCs (see links below). You can also purchase charts on CD or DVD from commercial sources.

However, there are some files Easy View cannot display. For example, it won't open GEO/NOS chart files, a format used by SoftChart (recently acquired by Maptech), or Admiralty charts in ARCS format, which are popular with offshore cruisers.

Download the free application at www.caris.com/products/easy-view and follow the instructions to load the program. A manual (included as a PDF file with the download) can be found in C:\\CARIS\EasyView\10\Documentation\ CARISEasyViewReferenceGuide.pdf. In order to view and print it, download a copy of Adobe's Acrobat Reader, which is available free (see link below).

WORKING WITH CHARTS

Bringing up a chart file is very straightforward in Easy View. After copying your chart files to your hard drive, simply choose "Browse" and select the file you want displayed. Once the chart is displayed, you can zoom and pan over the chart using your mouse (we recommend one with a scrolling wheel, so you can easily zoom in and out). If you open a vector chart, you can hide or show its layers or click on an object to display its attributes.

But that is about the extent of Easy View features for the recreational boater. Once a chart file is opened, you cannot move past the chart image on the screen to display the adjoining chart automatically. Nor can you click on an inset panel for a more detailed display in a larger scale. Easy View simply displays a graphical image. It does not know that chart 11512 adjoins chart 11511 to the south.

Unlike a true navigation program, it also does not automatically select an appropriately scaled chart, such as in the case where there is a small-scale chart and a large-scale chart available for the same area. You need to apply this intelligence, opening each chart file manually after figuring out the level of detail you want to see.

CARISEasy View displays vector charts in the standard S-57 format. Each chart object has an associated attribute list in the database. The example used here is the Venetian Causeway Bridge.If you are using free NOAA charts, obtain a copy of the agency's Catalog of Charts & Publications, which displays all the chart regions and their numbers. This publication helps you choose the chart files you wish to view and, more importantly, helps you identify which charts are adjacent as you move through a region. These free brochures are available at any marine store that sells NOAA paper charts.

Because Easy View is not designed as a navigation program, it also does not connect to your vessel's electronics, such as a GPS sensor. You can view charts for planning but cannot show your vessel's position or create waypoints, markers, routes or tracks.

Although there is a manual for Easy View, we found it was not particularly helpful. Easy View was not created for boaters, so the manual covers many non-boating features and focuses more heavily on Computer-Aided Design (CAD) users. Unless you are an engineer, it is not very intuitive.

The company does offer support via email and was very responsive to our requests in writing this review. However, because CARIS provides this viewer as a freebie to large government agency customers, it would be unfair to pester them with your common PC problems. A better approach is to think of Easy View as a tinkerer's solution to free chart viewing and try to solve problems on your own.

ASSESSMENT

Because Easy View was created as a service to CARIS customers-not specifically for recreational boaters-it doesn't have many features boaters need. In many ways, it is a "look but don't touch" program: you can display nearly any kind of mapping or charting file, but you cannot add to the displays to incorporate any vessel information.

For that reason, Easy View is best for simply planning at home when you want to peruse a library of charts without the hassle or cost of a stack of paper. It may also have use in certain applications as a simple backup or augmentation to more sophisticated navigation software.

The boater who would be most comfortable setting up and using Easy View would come from a profession that uses CAD software, perhaps an architect or engineer who owns a boat. Other users will likely find the interface a bit cumbersome and counterintuitive. If you are a CAD tweak, then Easy View's can-opener ability to read a huge variety of file formats is a plus: you can use it to open those GeoTIFF or AutoCAD files your friends send you. But most recreational boaters, who neither know nor care about these formats, would be better served by a simple, inexpensive marine-focused package.

SEACLEAR II

Unlike Easy View, SeaClear was created for boaters. In fact, it was created by Olle Soderholm, a Swedish recreational boater who was unhappy with the electronic charting choices available back in 1995. He makes it sound easy, but he literally "created his own package."

More than a decade later, SeaClear still has no commercial connection or support but its creator maintains the application in his spare time and makes small updates on a surprisingly regular basis.

One major update-SeaClear II-was created to run on Windows 2000 or XP, replacing SeaClear for Windows 95. For boaters on older Windows operating systems, versions are still available for download, which is a plus for boaters who are attached to their old (dare we say outdated?) equipment. So far, there is no version available that will run on Windows Vista.

THE DOWNLOAD

Since SeaClear is a free software application, it is only available for download from the Web (see link below). The download links are very clear, with choices available for your version of Windows. We downloaded the full install-about 2 megabytes-which included the English language manual. You can also choose to download the manual in other languages, including Spanish, French, German, Finnish, Dutch, and Hebrew.SEACLEARSeaClear allows limited control of the user interface through its Properties tab, but other packages offer more.

The installation puts four items in your Program directory: SeaClear II, which is the actual application; MapCal II, a program to help with chart installation; SeaClear II Manual, which is in PDF format; and a SeaClear II web link. Part of the download includes small-scale base charts for the world. This is not a chart set you can use-it shows only continents with no data-but it lets the program display a backdrop when you first hook up your GPS sensor and begin loading charts for your region.

In order to get up and running with SeaClear II, you need a few other items. Most importantly, you need raster charts in BSB/KAP or GEO/NOS format. SeaClear is designed to work with raster chart files only. Unlike many commercial applications, SeaClear does not include charts, nor does it include or display additional data files such as tides and currents, elevation maps, bathymetric data, street maps, or weather overlays. You can download BSB files from NOAA at no charge, or purchase regional CDs and DVDs inexpensively from several commercial sources.

You also need a mouse with a right button because SeaClear's functions are accessed via right-click menus. Although most mice now include a right-click button, we felt it was worth mentioning, just in case.

WORKING WITH CHARTS

One of the unusual features of SeaClear is that you can scan paper charts, calibrate the files, save them in PNG or BMP format and import them for viewing and navigation in SeaClear.

This is a great option for boaters heading to Croatia or Tonga. SeaClear's devotees include a community of long-distance budget boaters who are scanning paper charts of non-U.S. waters. Because SeaClear doesn't read the international S-57 vector format-and these chart files are very expensive anyway-scanning paper charts has become the discount work-around. If you think it's really cool to scan your own charts of exotic locales and massage digital files, this package is for you!

Unfortunately, most of us are more likely to simply want to import NOAA BSB raster charts of U.S. waters-and the manual is very thin on this basic chart installation process. Even if you're familiar and comfortable with Windows, the process is difficult to decipher. However, SeaClear comes with a separate map calibration and installation utility called ¯MapCal II" that helps with the install. The tricky part is that charts must be calibrated using a utility in MapCal before they can be read. Follow the instructions carefully.

There are two ways to install and organize chart files in SeaClear. You can simply dump any pair of BSB/KAP files into the C:\Program Files\SeaClear\Charts folder. Although this method works, it leads to a cluttered and unmanageable chart directory. And that leads to sluggish laptop performance because all of your charts must be scanned and recognized by the application.

A real-world example is trying to unload 138 Chesapeake Bay charts and load 200 Intracoastal Waterway charts as you migrate south. A better process is to keep the charts in separate regional folders, placing them in SeaClear's "Charts Folder" as you need them. Fortunately, SeaClear can read nested folders, which allows you to organize your charts into sub-folders by regions. In MapCal II, go to Tools>Autoload List>Scan for New Charts, which tells SeaClear to add those charts to its directory and makes them available for viewing and navigation.

LOOK AND FEEL

SeaClear gets high marks for its use of screen real estate, which is particularly important if you're on a laptop. Almost the entire screen is dedicated to the chart view. Most of SeaClear's functions are accessed with a right-click. There are also more than 20 preset keyboard shortcuts, such as Control+Space to set a man overboard marker at your current position. This leaves only two non-chart items on display: a clean summary title bar along the top which lists the chart, scale, zoom level and radar ring increments, as well as something called the ¯dashboard."

The dashboard is a thin vertical menu that displays a wide variety of data, including a list of waypoints and quick access to route statistics. If you have a GPS sensor connected, the Dashboard displays your position, course, speed and other data. Hook up your wind, depth and compass and you can see the summary of this data too. You can also maximize the chart screen area by temporarily minimizing the Dashboard. Click on the >> symbol at the top right of the Dashboard to ¯fold up" the Dashboard. To get the Dashboard back, move the mouse over the screen edge.

A negative of the Dashboard is its choice of content and display metrics. Throughout the program, there is a bit of a ¯translated" feel. For example, depths can only be shown in meters, not feet. The time is displayed in UTC rather than local time. Waypoints are called ¯positions." Course over ground and bearings are in degrees True-you cannot change them to magnetic. Some of the displays don't have units, leaving you wondering what ¯Course 4" means. (The answer is 4 degrees True.)

Most navigation programs let you customize metrics and displays. Although some aspects can be customized, SeaClear II is relatively rigid. We were a bit frustrated at not being able to change some of the interface or metrics in a way that made more sense to us. Unlike fully-featured-and more expensive-products, you don't have a lot of choice over what you're looking at and how the data is presented.

PERFORMANCE

The way in which a program opens a chart, scrolls on that chart, pops open an inset and zooms tells you a great deal. Faster is better, and SeaClear was highly responsive in all of these metrics. In fact, it loaded and redisplayed so quickly we were often behind with our mouse-clicks. Charts literally popped up on the screen. It was also very responsive when clicking-and-dragging to pan a chart. Using the ¯Outlines" option (File>Chart>Outlines) shows the extensions and insets, outlined with a rectangular box. Double-click on a chart outline and that chart panel comes right up. Double-click a chart margin to get back to the larger chart view. Use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out to show more detail or a larger view. Instead of wasting time scrolling back and forth between non-contiguous charts during planning, simply right-click and choose Charts>Previous to instantly go back. This shortcut lets you toggle back and forth between distant charts.

SeaClear also has several nice features to help navigate your chart files. If a GPS sensor is connected, right-clicking and choosing Charts>On Position brings up a window listing all charts spanning the current position. Single-click on a chart and it displays instantly. Right-clicking and choosing Charts>Find Boat centers you on the largest scale chart where the GPS says you are. You can also right-click and choose Charts>Best Chart to automatically view the largest scale chart for your position. If you don't have a GPS hooked up, choose File>Chart>List All and pick a chart.

There are some deficiencies too. SeaClear's screen images didn't appear as smooth and sharp as some other applications. SeaClear also cannot rotate charts, as you might do to show a course-up display. For all manufacturers, this is a trade-off between display speed and the limitations of the raster format. Unlike vector charts, which are comprised of data, raster charts are large images that are sluggish and more difficult to rotate.

WAYPOINTS AND ROUTES

SeaClear is designed to be used with waypoint data. It has many features for creating and saving routes (sequences of waypoints) and tracks (a record of your course over the ground). You can save an unlimited number of waypoints and routes, constrained only by the storage capacity of your system.

Waypoint entry was very easy using the chart display and the mouse-click menu: simply right-click, choose Position>Add and enter a waypoint name to mark that location. Waypoint names can include spaces and upper- and lower-case to make them easy to read and remember. For example, we entered the long waypoint label of ¯Rickenbacker Moorings." Another nice feature is a comment field associated with each waypoint, letting you enter a lengthy personal note.

Tracks can be saved and plotted to create routes. You can join several shorter routes to create a longer route. It was easy to insert new waypoints into a route and to extend a route with additional waypoints. You can reverse a route with one click using ¯Reverse Route" in the dashboard menu. In addition, the dashboard displays your route statistics: start, end, and distance. If a GPS is connected, you can set a cross-track error alarm.SEACLEARSeaClear does not include a port wizard to help connect the GPS and other devices, requiring you to use the Device Manager in Windows XP. That made setup a little more difficult.

Waypoints, routes, and tracks can be imported and exported. You can transfer waypoint and route data from your PC to navigation units capable of receiving NMEA waypoint and route data. Your data can also be saved as a comma-delimited text file for export to other applications.

SeaClear also has some features reminiscent of the systems on commercial ships. For example, commercial vessels are required to keep an electronic log-essentially a "black box"-of their routes. Instead of only recording a track, SeaClear goes one step further and automatically keeps a log of date, time, position, heading and speed. It also has a Logbook feature for manual entries. These records can be opened, edited, and saved as a text file.

Our primary complaint about SeaClear's waypoint, track, and route features was not in its options, but the handling and organization of the data. We had quite a bit of trouble saving the waypoints in an organized way. In the end, it took several tries to understand the proper sequence of steps to save data-and this sequence was cumbersome and required a lot of screens and mouse-clicking for each data point. Even when we thought waypoints were correctly saved, we occasionally found some of our data either disappeared or was incorrectly stored in another regional waypoint folder when we restarted the application.

If you are a waypoint junkie (or cruising guide author), you ideally want multiple SeaClear position files, or collections of waypoints, within the SeaClear waypoint folder to organize your waypoint data. For example, you'd like a file for your Chesapeake Bay waypoints and a file for your Intracoastal Waterway waypoints. Unfortunately, the documentation is not much help here. After about 45 minutes of experimenting, we were able to create regional waypoint files to organize our thousands of waypoints.

But after all that effort there was a catch: once a waypoint is saved to a file, your ability to edit it is seriously constrained. Although you can edit the attributes of an individual waypoint, you cannot do any advanced editing, such as moving waypoints from one regional file to another. Any future changes require deleting and re-creating the waypoint.

Another problem we encountered was that, although all data files are supposed to be printable, we never could get printing of any kind to work. All options for printing, including charts, routes, and waypoint list data, resulted in a solid black printed sheet. Multiple computers, with multiple printers, on both wired and wireless networks all exhibited this bug.

Additionally, the typical way to access a waypoint is through the dashboard, which lists all waypoints alphabetically in a pull-down menu. Although it is straightforward to select the waypoint you want and then click "Find Position," this approach to searching is cumbersome if you have a lot of waypoints. You must scroll through an extremely long list to choose the one you want.

Ultimately, we were very disappointed with the organization of waypoint and route data. If you are a light user, however, you'll probably be fine with SeaClear's process. Simply use the program's default and store all your waypoints in one place , such as a file named ¯My Waypoints."

INTEGRATING ELECTRONICS

SeaClear is designed to be used with a GPS sensor and you will get much more out of the software if you connect one. These small hockey-puck-sized devices connect to your computer through your serial or USB port and cost less than $100. Be sure to install the proper driver on your machine, which allows the computer to run the GPS. This is usually contained in the software that came with the device, or can be downloaded from the GPS manufacturer's website.

When you first start the application, SeaClear prompts you for the GPS sensor-even before it asks for the chart files. If you don't want to connect a GPS, you can pass through these prompts to load the charts. Port recognition between the GPS sensor and SeaClear was our first speed bump in getting the application running. SeaClear's default communication port for USB-to-serial is ¯COM1," meaning it was looking on COM1 for the GPS. But the GPS driver's default was ¯COM5." In the XP Device Manager, we had to change the communications port to COM1 and the transmission rate from 9600 baud to 4800 baud. Once your GPS is connected, the dashboard shows green and displays your position data. A red circle shows your position on the chart. If you lose GPS connectivity, don't panic. The program automatically searches for the GPS device every few minutes and will return to that mode once it has re-located the sensor.

SeaClear also integrates with your depth, wind, and compass data if you connect these NMEA instruments. The data displays on the dashboard and a wind arrow displays on the chart showing the wind's angle relative to your vessel. Similarly, autopilots, radar and AIS instruments can be connected. Radar ranging rings are shown overlaid on the chart display. Connecting to an AIS device displays the target on the chart display with a target-name drop-down list on the dashboard.

SeaClear II has a couple of other interesting features. Although you can only lightly customize the program-things like boat shape, colors, size and ranging rings-it has a customizable "night mode" option. You can set the shading level between regular, shade, dusk, and night settings to alter the brightness or darkness of the chart display.

Although SeaClear cannot display charts vessel-up, it has a compromise option where you can set the boat icon toward the bottom of the screen rather than the center, so that most of the chart display is in front of your vessel.

SeaClear also has a "simulation mode," which is a feature available in many of the more expensive software packages. If you don't connect a GPS, SeaClear runs in what it calls "DR Mode," maintaining a dead reckoning course based on your manual input of speed and heading. Your vessel is still shown with an icon, moving across the chart display based on the DR calculations. A ¯Speed Marker" advances before your position to indicate where you will be in 60 seconds, five minutes or one hour. You customize this speed marker in Tools>Properties>Display. But be careful: because a GPS is not connected and DR is a hypothetical indication of your course, you should never rely on this display to indicate speed or position.

TECH SUPPORT

Customer support for SeaClear is simple: you get what you pay for. Because you paid nothing, you get nothing. We tried to contact Sping multiple times by email with no response. That leaves customer support to you and the manual. We did eventually hear from Ollie, who said he was out sailing for several weeks and replied briefly to some of our emailed questions. But you get the idea.SEACLEARSeaClear's uncluttered display features a Dashboard (right) and a right-click popup menu. The result is more space for charts. Displayed here is the software's "DR Mode" with projection.

Unfortunately, the manual is poorly written and very thin. It's not written from a user's perspective, explaining "how to use" or "why one cares." Instead, it lists features from a software engineer's view. The manual has been translated into American English, with awkward sentences, grammatical mistakes and unconventional terms (such as "position" rather than "waypoint"). Furthermore, although SeaClear was recently updated, the manual was not. Several of the screen menus did not match the documentation.

The best bet for troubleshooting is to post questions on one of the many recreational boater forums. Other recreational boaters using SeaClear may be able to help.

ASSESSMENT

Although the software has many great features for boaters, including integration with your vessel devices, the documentation is so poor you'll pay for features in start-up time. The best target user for SeaClear II is someone who values "free" and is willing to slug it out with trial and error.

But there is such a boater. And you truly can put together a nicely-featured charting and navigation program, combined with free NOAA charts, for only your time and effort. If you have the time and know-how (or patience), this package is a great deal. It's also the perfect package for shoestring international boaters who want to scan paper charts to circumvent purchasing expensive international digital charts.

However, if you are easily frustrated by computers or are not very Windows-savvy, SeaClear may not be a bargain when you in factor in your time and stomach lining. One of the low-priced charting and navigation packages, which will include professional-level documentation and customer support, may be a better choice for you.

NEXT WEEK: Navigation Software for the Mac.

Capt. Mark Doyle and Capt. Diana Doyle are authors of the Managing the Waterway cruising guide series, and their work has appeared in numerous publications. They also produce CDs and DVDs of NOAA and USACE charts.