need help with seaclearII

Dec 7, 2012
515
Kittiwake 23, Irwin 43 .. Indianapolis / indianatown, fl
hello all

I recently purchased sea clear II navigation program and all the NOAA charts for the USA.. I have been trying to get the charts I need loaded into sea clear II, but to no avail so far.. there it only 1 very short paragraph explaining how to do it.. I am totally lost on this...

I need help

sincerely
Jess
 

Joe

.
Jun 1, 2004
8,320
Catalina 27 Mission Bay, San Diego
Go to the NOAA website for detailed instruction... they offer the program and charts at no cost... at least they did a few years back. Check the bottom of this post for an attached pdf file of the user manual.

Here's a response I copied from another forum regarding getting the product installed:
Obtain Charting Products

Download the charts you want. When the download is complete you need to unzip the file. This tool is embedded within Windows. Put all of the uncompressed files in a chart folder under the Seaclear Folder.

Next run MapCal_2.exe. Select 'tools' -- 'set directories' and type in where these files are. Then Select 'tools' -- 'Autoload lists' --- 'scan for new charts'. When this finishes, close MapCal_2.exe.

Then open Seaclear. If your GPS is connected Seaclear will autoselect the correct chart. if not you can select 'Files' -- 'open charts' and select a chart from the list.

I recommend reading the manual. All of this is covered.
If you purchased this from a third party then I would contact them with your issue if you still can't get it working.
 

Attachments

Dec 7, 2012
515
Kittiwake 23, Irwin 43 .. Indianapolis / indianatown, fl
hello all

thanks for the link.. I downloaded the manual.. I will review it and hopefully it will help me get through this easier..

sincerely
Jess
 
Feb 26, 2004
23,352
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
Jesse, the Sea Clear program I bought a few years HAD all the charts. I didn't have to download anything. Jack's right, the "trick" is to simply get them into the correct "folder". IIRC, the instructions that came on the Sea Clear disk in the Help file was pretty good. In fact, I ran the program off the disk, without having to transfer the all the charts over to my hard drive. Not necessarily the way you may want to go, but I felt that loading up my hard drive with tons of charts that I wouldn't ever use for local navigation wasn't something I wanted to do.

While it's nice to have access to charts of places I'll never get to sail, I find that simply going to activecaptain will bring up any charts of other areas pretty quickly if I want to, for example, follow Roger Long and his travels. :)

Good luck.
 
Nov 26, 2008
1,970
Endeavour 42 Cruisin
3rd parties are bundling seaclear with all the charts. Supposed to work 'out of the box' with no need to download multiple charts and install them, etc
 
Feb 26, 2004
23,352
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
I thought Seaclear II was free.
It is. gettinthere mentioned 3rd parties, my $20 version came from www.cruisingservices.net. The reason I spent the $20 was I figured it was worth my time to be able to avoid having to download all those charts, or even just the ones I would use, that's all: convenience.

BTW, they were also packaging that disc plus a BU-353 GPS dongle for a rather good price, but I already had the dongle.

Don't know if they still offer it.
 

Joe

.
Jun 1, 2004
8,320
Catalina 27 Mission Bay, San Diego
It is. gettinthere mentioned 3rd parties, my $20 version came from www.cruisingservices.net. The reason I spent the $20 was I figured it was worth my time to be able to avoid having to download all those charts, or even just the ones I would use, that's all: convenience.

BTW, they were also packaging that disc plus a BU-353 GPS dongle for a rather good price, but I already had the dongle.

Don't know if they still offer it.
I think having it on the disc is pretty convenient... especially since you can leave the charts on the dvd if you choose, there's no password or authorization code so you can put it on all your computers... I have it on three... making the $20 a fair price. I don't think SeaClear is an especially awesome nav program.. but it will get you where you want to go.
 
Feb 26, 2004
23,352
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
Yes, Joe, that's it. IIRC, I could run the Sea Clear program itself right off the disc, too, no need to even download the "program" to the computer hard drive.
 

richk

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Jan 24, 2007
495
Marlow-Hunter 37 Deep Creek off the Magothy River off ChesBay
I used to use Seaclear downloaded off the original programmer's website. It was free then. Now I get a malware warning on that site (sping.com)
 
Dec 7, 2012
515
Kittiwake 23, Irwin 43 .. Indianapolis / indianatown, fl
I used to use Seaclear downloaded off the original programmer's website. It was free then. Now I get a malware warning on that site (sping.com)
hello all

I bought the $20 program disk with a 2nd disk of NOAA charts of all the USA and other areas too... so far I have not been able to melt the program and chart disk together so I can pull up the charts on the program... right now I am in Chesapeake bay area in Portsmouth Virginia... I am only wanting to pull up the Chesapeake bay charts to I can study them and possibly chart a sail... but to no avail so far... I have the charts downloaded into my laptop, but cannot seam to get them to work together...

sincerely
Jess
 

Gary_H

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Nov 5, 2007
469
Cal 2-25 Carolina Beach NC
Haven't used Sea Clear since I discovered OpenCPN but when I did it was free and I downloaded all the charts from NOAA I believe, also free.