Lowrance NauticPath electronic charts

Lowrance started talking about its new NauticPath electronic charts last fall, but the details — cost, which plotters they’ll run on, and “where the heck did Lowrance get them?” — are still resolving themselves. You may still find Web references to regional cards at $99 apiece, but it’s definite now that Lowrance will ship (very soon) all U.S. coastal charts on one card for $109 retail! And a new page at Lowrance says that the Great Lakes, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and USVI are also included! The same page indicates that most every plotter in Lowrance’s fast-growing line will run these charts, though a firmware upgrade may be needed. So one sweet possibility is backing up a boat’s plotter system with an inexpensive waterproof handheld loaded with charts, and also able to play MP3 music! By the way, at a Miami Boat Show press conference, Lowrance allowed that NauticPath is based on the same Transas chart database that Nobeltec and Garmin licensed as the foundation of their electronic chart formats.

Lowrance has a phenomenal number of new products this year, and the specs on many of them will likely prompt more exclamation points here.