Free Worldwide Coastline Charts

Good news for portable navigator users
You can now obtain free coastline data from the US Government ! Just visit the USGS Woods Hole Field Centre website and use their simple extractor to capture the segment of coastline required. It is quickest to return it to yourself as a ZIP file and to follow their advice by not trying to download too big a coastline section. Use the default MAPGEN format option. You can use the World Chart with Portable Navigator to check the "Range of Extracted Coastline" Lat/Long figures needed by the Getcoast extractor.

Full details are given on the site for operating the Coastline Extractor. Once you have saved the returned zip file unzip it and renamed the resulting .DAT file, (since it just has a number as a file name), this is the raw vector data for the chart. You now need to convert it to PN Chart file format using the free ESL Utility Pos2cht.exe, which you can download from the ESL Website. If you download the Portable Navigator demo "Pos2cht" is included!

This conversion utility will create a PN chart file from the .DAT file just you captured. You may find the unzipped file in the /tmp/usr/ directory which the unzip process will create. This is because the path was included on the host machine when it was zipped up. If you find this all too confusing don't select the zip option in the Coastline Extractor, just download the file uncompressed; (however the file will be about twice as big).

Select the output file name to be in the /pnav/charts/ directory, to save moving it later, and run the conversion utility. The default settings will convert the file. Once you have configured the conversion program the paths are saved to it's config file so it is quick to use next time. Once you have converted the file, open it with Portable Navigator and view it. You should re-frame, zoom, and re-save it with PN to get the correct view on loading the chart. Now all you have to do is add waypoints and other layers if required to complete the chart.

Frequently asked question: What about Royalties ?

If you follow this link, and others, you can read the conditions under which the data is supplied. Basically there are no restrictions on it's "free" use, but you can't sell it !

Return to the ESL home page.