Pat Anderson
New member
OK, I know the Navionics NavPlanner is coming out Real Soon Now (it was SUPPOSED to be out at the end of February, but nobody is listing it for sale yet as far as I know). I do have Coastal Explorer, which is way cool, and I will have the laptop on board connected to either the GPS puck or the Garmin GPSMAP76 (both work just fine with my laptop, I used them on the Chesapeake and also with MS Streets and Trips). So my question is, how can I get my Coastal Explorer waypoints and routes into the C-80? The little PCWaypoint program works GREAT for just waypoints, but it requires a LOT of manual entry of coordinates into the Excel spreadsheet and only handles waypoints not routes. I love graphical PC chartplotting with Coastal Explorer. Of course Garmin has had MapSource software for years (had to acknowledge that to keep Bill F happy). Right clicking a selected route in Coastal Explorer has "Send to GPS" as an option, but (A) I don't have a cable and don't know how to build one, and (2) the C-80 doesn't have any place to plug in a cable from a PC. So I am guessing I would have to gin up a serial cable from the PC and figure out how to attach it to the C-80 NMEA inputs - not for the faint of heart. Coastal Explorer can also export to Navigation Object, Maptech and OpenNav formats, which I could save to a CF card and insert in the C-80, but as far as I know, the C-80 cannot import any of those - or can it? So I am wondering if anybody has any info (it would be great if the explanation could include the HOW as well as the WHAT). TIA for any help here!