After visiting with some fellow cruisers bound for Australia, I got curious to research some free NOAA charts they were telling me about online. Sure enough, within a few seconds I was able to dig up a link to both Raster Navigational Charts and Electronic Navigational Charts. I downloaded a few samples, then started searching for software to allow me to use them. Within an hour, I had downloaded hundreds of charts and was playing with OpenCPN, feeling the excitement of browsing thousands of dollars in NOAA charts that I had freely and legally downloaded off the Internet.
