Charts: free NOAA vs. $$$ Jeppesen or Navionics

I have two MFD 12s. Last year I took them both to a Furuno dealer and they downloaded new charts and the latest programming upgrades. Then they made sure both units were working properly as slave and master whihc can be an MFD issue. Cost was about $350 and piece of mind priceless. My cruising grounds are PNW both Canada and USA so lots more to consider than saving a few bucks. Won't you be in Canada too?

We use both, and both are different. The paid charts, while not cheep, I *think* are updated more frequently. However we haven't found anything wrong per say with the NOAA charts. That is the NOAA ENC charts, not their Raster charts.

Obviously NOAA charts are going to be limited primarily to US waters.

In Canada, boats of certain size are required to carry official CHS charts, sold by an authorized dealer to meet carriage requirements. You may want to factor that into account as well.

The NOAA charts are updated weekly. The update information is published every week via the Local Notice to Mariners.

The NOAA ENC charts are updated to reflect the information disseminated via the LNM's. I am not sure how frequently the Raster charts are updated, but the file they provide will have a notation in the lower left hand corner that will let you know how up to date that Raster chart is.

Now, consider this: While you "think" the paid charts are updated more frequently. where do you think they are getting the data from to do the updates. If you guessed that the chart data for the paid charts comes from the Government Hydrographic Agencies, you would be correct. So the answer is, that the paid charts are NOT updated as frequently as the charts you can get for free for yourself from, in this case, NOAA.

I am running both, I have Nobeltec and a full ECDIS chart software. You will find the third party charts sometimes have more information and a better user interface. When I compare the two, there is quite a difference, especially in foreign waters, like the Bahamas.
Right now I am in the Virgin Islands and I am not seeing that great of a difference, I think it comes down to what you are most comfortable with.
A for updating, you would be surprised how the private charts lack in the updates, I can go on weekly and update my official charts to be in compliance.

"When I compare the two, there is quite a difference, especially in foreign waters, like the Bahamas."

Which ones do you like best for the Bahamas?

The only charts you want for the Bahamas are explorer charts. There just the best. On an iPad garmin blue charts are pretty close so I would assume the charts they used in their plotters are as good

The navnet3D charts we have are explorer charts not sure about the last update

FWIW, I have read that the C-Map charts for the Bahamas area are the Explorer Charts (maybe that means they're derived from Explorer Charts). C-Map charts are an option on our NN3D system, but since we're mostly on the Chesapeake we only use the NOAA raster and vector charts on the plotter... and use C-Map charts via Plan2Nav as one of the back-up nav apps on an Android tablet.

-Chris