Chart Sticker Shock 2018

[yalla]

Craigslist has worked well for me, took less than a year to find pretty much all the government charts for BC waters for about $300 total, including individual many duplicates and extras.

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by rognvald

We're planning our final escape from the Great Lakes this Summer and are amazed at the increase in price for nautical charts. It appears that it is less expensive to buy a chartbook than to buy individual NOAA charts for the Lakes and the St. Lawrence. We always plot our course on paper and only use our GPS for verifying our DR plot. Are chartbooks the way to go now until we hit the Atlantic and go offshore? $24.95 for one chart? Wow!
Thanks, Rognvald

$24.95 per chart is unfortunately not new pricing. Its been that way for several years. The last full size chart I bought was chart#2000 and it cost $20 back in 2005....

Hence the switch to electronic navigation and chart kits.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by stormalong

In this electronic age it is now far less expensive to buy two computers, download OPENCPN and NOAA charts, both for free. The computers are faster and cheaper than dedicated chart plotters plus they can be used for other purposes as well. Why two - redundancy.

As you become part of the cruising community you will find other electronic charts available for little or no cost. Maybe not the most current but many of the developing countries' charts have not been updated in decades.

My concern is, what happens when some one's electronics or electrical system takes a dump? Is it were the hell am I?

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by Cadence

My concern is, what happens when some one's electronics or electrical system takes a dump? Is it were the hell am I?

Up here on the great lakes, they have you either way! no free electronic charts either! Electronic copyright is controlled by CHS. you want charts to navigate in the great lakes, either way they get their $ from you!

[hellosailor]

"It appears that it is less expensive to buy a chartbook than to buy individual NOAA charts"
Always, ALWAYS, has been that way.
NOAA stopped printing charts because it is damned expensive. Accurate 4-color printing, plus the overhead, the warehousing, the excess inventory when there are changes, all priced charts out of the business. Leaving chart-on-demand with the advantage of always being up to date, but inkjet printing is much more expensive than lithography to start with.
So...the mass produced chartbooks can still compete with electronics. When chartbooks were optically copied from charts, many distortion errors were introduced. But now that they are sourced from the same digital charts as everyone else...there's no reason to shun chartbooks.

[indimini]

Staples.com offers blueprint printing service. 36 x 48 is $7.29 for BW and $11.89 for color print on standard paper. Free NOAA PDF charts and the printing service is a pretty reasonable option imho.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by stormalong

I carry three GPS receivers, all capable of feeding data to a PC. And two Monitors - one is the vessels TV. After 130,000 miles I have never had an electrical failure and consider it unlikely.

The most important thing charting software does is show you where you are on the chart. Loosing waypoints would not be a serious issue if a computer died. You plotted your route once, you can do it again.

Plotting on paper charts can cause mistakes. Along time ago, before computerized navigation I was sailing through the Torres Straight - a place where a very accurate route is essential. My on watch crew woke me up and said "I think we are aground". We were sailing fine, on course. She had plotted our position wrong on the paper chart.

You can't blame the chart for stupidity. maybe having an electronics background makes me believe a manual system should be available as a backup? One good lightning strike is not likely to burn a chart.

[astokel]

Originally Posted by Benz

Chartbooks are the least expensive way to go--I found the Canadian charts to be horribly expensive, and on top of that the soundings are in meters! For what they charge they could at least do fathoms....grumble

How many leagues or chains in a fathom? Metres are much more up-to-date.

A

[Cadence]

I feel sure in some parts of the world Capt. Cook made todays charts. Some knowledge is better than nothing. The bottom probably hadn't moved much other than inlets, but they shift all the time.

[hellosailor]

"Plotting on paper charts can cause mistakes."
That's blaming the tools for a bad carpenter. The paper charts never cause mistakes. An untrained, overtired, confused, poor choice of navigator causes the mistakes.

Indimini-
Staples got sued, bit time, for copying chapters of college texts. Their corporate policy, which will vary with the intelligence of the local staff, is that if you bring in something that is not YOUR ORIGINAL WORK, they want to see a copyright release for it. Some of them won't even copy birth certificates because "That's a government document, you can't copy it." Which is plain wrong, stupid ignorance, but that's corporate policy. When in doubt, no copies.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by astokel

How many leagues or chains in a fathom? Metres are much more up-to-date.

A

There are no leagues or chains in a fathom. But to claim that meters are more up-to-date is just stupid. The length of a fathom hasn't changed nearly as many times as the definition of a "Metre".
But if you ever get out to Newfoundland, compare the modern metric charts of Hare Bay or the inside passage toward Lewisporte with the old fathom charts. You'll find to your astonishment that there are no soundings on the current issue charts at all for large areas there: a note reads: "Not surveyed to modern standards." However, the old charts made by Cook or whomever eons ago have soundings in fathoms are are as accurate as I could detect.
But rather than use soundings that don't conform to their imbecile system of measurement, the Canadian Government prefers to not provide ANY information, even though that leaves their charts woefully deficient and criminally dangerous. Seriously, you pay an exhorbitant amount for a chart, and they purposefully leave areas blank? This is why the metric system, and the Canadian Hydrographic office, is a giant fail.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Benz

...You'll find to your astonishment that there are no soundings on the current issue charts at all for large areas there: a note reads: "Not surveyed to modern standards." However, the old charts made by Cook or whomever eons ago have soundings in fathoms are are as accurate as I could detect.
But rather than use soundings that don't conform to their imbecile system of measurement, the Canadian Government prefers to not provide ANY information, even though that leaves their charts woefully deficient and criminally dangerous. Seriously, you pay an exhorbitant amount for a chart, and they purposefully leave areas blank? This is why the metric system, and the Canadian Hydrographic office, is a giant fail.

Yes, I cruised past many areas like that this past season while heading to Newfoundland. Areas of white, with no survey data. Rather disconcerting.

But your statement is both ridiculous and silly. The lack of soundings data has nothing to do with the use of the metric system. Even a bureaucrat can convert between fathoms and metres. It obviously has to do with some other issue. If I had to guess it would be that the area hasn’t been sounded for so long, that they deem it irresponsible to provide potentially false information. You may disagree with this assessment, but it has nothing to do with the metric system.

I actually prefer my charts in feet, but since Canada, like almost every other country in the world, now uses the metric system, it’s obvious that new Canadian charts will be issues in that measure.

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by Benz

Chartbooks are the least expensive way to go--I found the Canadian charts to be horribly expensive, and on top of that the soundings are in meters! For what they charge they could at least do fathoms....grumble

Why fathoms? its such an old measurement system! meters makes total sense! my boat draws 1.35m easy to figure out. if you can count to 10 you can handle the metric system the rest of the world has figured it out.

Though I have to admit thinking of a 2x4 as a 50mmx100mm piece of wood is just weird!

[Jim Cate]

Good grief!!!

If you can not handle the conversion between meters, fathoms and feet in your head to a sufficient degree of accuracy for piloting purposes, well, perhaps you should not be in charge of a vessel.

Jim

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Cadence

My concern is, what happens when some one's electronics or electrical system takes a dump? Is it were the hell am I?

Then I pull out the tablet with navionics or laptop with opencpn and and and all the way to old handheld GPS and photocopied paper.

I always run the dedicated seiwa plotter and opencpn with various overlays side by side when on passage.