Buy paper charts?

[LeaseOnLife]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

That's not a bad idea, and i suspect the way forward for many but I find it's increasing difficult to print out some electronic charts. I've resorted to screen prints but you have to careful about zoom levels and the resulting informatio, more then once I realised there was info missing.


Dave

True for vector charts on opencpn. It needs a few trials. I tend to print to pdf (virtual printer), add text notes via "foxit pdf reader", and only print once I am happy, saving ink. This also helps to re-print when charts got wet, ripped, flew away in the wind.

Dirk

[barnakiel]

I am not sure about plotters yet. They are present on nearly every boat I sail but they never (ok, hardly ever is more adequate) tempt me to get one for ourselves. I do have a netbook with whatever software I could afford (most of it came free from other sailors who upgraded theirs). I extensively use electronics for pre-planning of our passages, but on a passage I always have a paper chart at hand - one with the open water area and a couple with the likely landfalls.

I must admit, more than once, esp. in poor visibility, (like when caught in fog off N Portugal), being able just to switch the laptop on and seek refuge was a great plus.

There are apparently vast differences in our plotter needs most likely resulting from our different sailing styles.

b.

[LeaseOnLife]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Can anyone explain to me pls why every time I post a quote there is that ship in the picture? Am I the only one who has this issue? Am I bugged? Am I bugging others? Is this some sort of Easter(n) prank?

Thanks. Sorry for disturbing the flow.

barnakiel

I don't see a ship in your post, or when I quote. But I use some ad-blocking software....

[barnakiel]

Hey people, sorry, this image (attached):

I just see it in like 50% of the answers that quote any post.

I probably ask the admins, I am not clear, maybe I am just doing something stupid.

Hopefully only I am bugged.
b.

[foolishsailor]

Originally Posted by RabidRabbit

i can't stand trying to see my whole route on a screen, panning in and out. Maybe someday a 30" chartplotter screen will change this, but that won't help reliability issues.

Double thumps up.

[HappySeagull]

(..when the wiring fries), on a moonless night and I am comparing silhouettes using a handbearing compass through gusting rainshowers against a chart I can only see with a kerosene lamp that has red screens or it blinds me , ....no thanks.....

I carry some spare batteries for gps + laptop against that eventuality.

[foolishsailor]

Like many contentious debates on this forum, there really isn't an either/or answer or opinion to this thread

[LeaseOnLife]

I mentioned the use of a chartplotter on our boat, but we really only have it, because it does the radar. I'd like to steer away from "electronic navigation = chartplotter".

Electronic navigation can be done, for reasonable money, with a netbook plus external monitor.

For planing and navigation we use OpenCPN on a laptop, with a waterproof monitor in the cockpit, resolution 1024x768, for both.

One of the advantages using a PC or MAC, is not to be locked into proprietary vector charts. I like the looks of paper charts much better, they seem to give me more information than a vector charts at the same scale.

Example: Passing South of Madagascar, one is advised to avoid the sea mounts in bad weather and go almost 150 miles South. Our vector chart doesn't show detail until zoomed in enough. Contrary, even the passage-planning "paper" chart shows the sea mounts. With one or two clicks I switch between different scale charts:

[Capt Phil]

Because of my vintage, I was always more comfortable with paper charts but most of the vessels I delivered had the latest and greatest and most up to date electronics which included a variety of plotters, GPS, radar and other exotic gizmos most of which I learned to operate, usually by having a crew member 1/2 or 1/3 my age show me.
I became quite adept at using them but always backed up positions and course every 2 hours on my trusty paper charts that I carried with me much to the amusement of my younger crew. I always tried to confirm both DR and plotter position with a noon sight, weather permitting, just to keep my hand in. I recall listening to a conversation between a couple of younger crew about whether I was just having them on when I took out my old sextant, my reduction tables and calculator. However, coming in to Puerto Vallarta around midnight one evening, the plotter said we were about 6 blocks inland when I spotted the surf line and swung out to try and pick up the range lights about a mile south of our position. The plotter had obviously loaded up the old raster charts for Banderos Bay which are notoriously inaccurate, setting you about 1-1 1/2 km north and east of your actual position. No more jokes about the 'old bugger' after that. Paper Charts? Don't leave home without them! Capt Phil

[bobconnie]

Ive never felt the need to carry EVERY Chart there is for the area Im gonna cruise!! A large scale ocean chart of the cruising area and closer shore line charts and the possible harbor charts needed, A coast pliot if needed. There have been times the Capt Program has helped to get a chart I missed in my pre-cruise planning ! so I guess even I have got to have electronics LOL At least once I did LOL

[Kettlewell]

Our vector chart doesn't show detail until zoomed in enough. Contrary, even the passage-planning "paper" chart shows the sea mounts. With one or two clicks I switch between different scale charts

This type of thing is very important to note. The vectorization of charts has lost critical information in some cases. Down in the southwest Caribbean I noted that there were many things on older raster charts and the paper versions of same that seemed to disappear from the vector charts. One black night we passed by some offshore reefs that carried a note on the raster and paper charts about them possibly being misplotted by up to a half-mile. Later we ran into a Dutch boat that thought they would be able to anchor near these reefs and approached them with the vector chart only to find they were misplotted. They hit hard and might not have been able to get off if they hadn't had an aluminum boat. I noticed the same thing entering Providencia, where I had an ancient paper chart based on 19th-century surveys that had some excellent profile drawings of the mountains including some safety bearings on various land features that were excellent help as the buoys were not where charted.

[nigel1]

Been lookinmg at this both as electronic charts, and as a source for printing paper copies.
At the present time, only covers UK and Ireland, but for £25, seems reasonable.
Uses Rastor charts rather than Vector.
Anyone here tried it??

[Capt Phil]

bobconnie +1! Fresh Coast Pilot is a must... Capt Phil

[JoeFish]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

In my case sailing the European and Atlantic med coasts etc, the situation is not as clear cut. Firstly to carry charts to adequately cover say a trip from Southampton to Nice. I'd have to carry 100s. This costs a fortune...

Dave,

It's an interesting argument. I feel your pain as I have to deal with this every time I go to Europe to sail or when I'm in the Caribbean.

This is a problem you and your fellow yachtsmen should take up with your local governments. Producing raster and vector charts for your respective navies has been something you've been paying for with your tax dollars for a very long time. From a commerce standpoint there are many other additional economic benefits to providing detailed information to mariners at low to no cost.

It's noted in the history of the US Coast Survey, “the Survey is considered to have been one of the major birthplaces of modern American science, including many disciplines not generally associated with geodesy and hydrology. Its creation is a cornerstone of the rapid growth of science and technology and of the development of natural resources for commercial use in the United States.”

I believe that our charts became free as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request many years ago, although I could have been misinformed on this.

It was also determined that cost was a significant barrier to use of critical navigation resources and the growing cost of search and rescue. Combined with the militarization of the US Coast, which had traditionally been a part of the US Department of Commerce until it was hijacked, first for the war on drugs (give me a f'ing break) and now this ridiculous 'war on terror' (but don't get me started on that one).

So, electronic delivery as made it much easier to get charts into the hands of mariners. Printing by the US Printing Office was a costly endeavor and I'm sure it was revenue negative the entire history of the printed chart (heavily subsidized by the government as they are necessary for maritime commerce). So why not just create digital raster and vector variants and put them online? They HAVE to make them for the Navy anyway.

A French report noted, "When you consider a helicopter costs around 2500 Euros per hour and a search and rescue could take several days and involve hundreds of trained personnel in the worst case..."

This surely puts this into the 'money saved' column.

It's up to you to lobby your own government, then you can enjoy all the benefits of low/no cost navigation as we do here in the US and our territories.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by LeaseOnLife

(...) Our vector chart doesn't show detail until zoomed in enough.(...)

An extreme case of this fact came to my attention when a sailor friend was getting ready to sail Canary Islands to Brazil back in 2003. Only after our conversation did he become aware of the rocks that are somewhere like half way down the route.

Somewhat further down the road, we sailed down the coast from Opua to Auckland. I pre-planned the route with one kind of ecs but underway decided to look something up and fired up another application. To my shocker, there was a rock off a headland, one that was not there before (the rock! ;-)) ... Both pieces of software were displaying the same chart ... !

And so on and so forth. I do not know if and how this issue has been addressed in plotters. I just hope it DID.

And not to say such horrors do not happen with a paper chart.

barnie