Do you know the little round island to the north of this picture?

If you do, it must have been in a dream, because I’m told it definitely doesn’t exist.

The screen grab is from the iPad Navionics charts of the Caribbean and it shows the real island of Redonda, WSW of Antigua, plus another fictitious one we’ll call Anomaly Isle. You can click on the image above to enlarge it.

According to a source in the Caribbean, the iPad charts have anomalies such as this that are not on the Navionics fixed plotter versions.

I contacted Navionics about this and they say that the charting data is the same as Navionics Gold charts. I must say that it sounds strange. Why would an island, or other chart feature, appear on one platform but not the other?

But if that’s the case, it’s a very serious disadvantage of using mobile devices, and we’d like to know more.

Can you help us out with this?

Do you have Navionics charts for the Caribbean on a fixed plotter and, if you do, could you see if there’s another island on the reef at Redonda, or not? Please would you let us know the result and take a pic or a screen shot and email it to us?

And by the way, I’ve got lots more to write about using the iPad as a cheap chartplotter and all-rounder. When I can get to the bottom of this rather vital issue, I’ll write about what the iPad can do and why I think you probably might want one after all.