Paper Charts

[sailorboy1]

I like paper charts and still use them!! I especially like that I can write on them and that I can still read them when the area is a big. So remember I said this at the end of the post.

With the availability of electronic charts really just how important/useful do people feel paper charts are now days? I mean between chart-plotters, PDF computer files/copies of charts and low cost apps does it really make sense to buy paper charts that also take up a lot of room? I currently have 2 regions of Maptech chart-kits on my boat and to cover the regions I'm planing on seeing in the next year I would to buy 5 more. Those 5 sets of charts will cost around $650-700 and I could buy another spare chart-plotter instead and have $200 left over.

Heck chart-plotters kind of made paper charts obsolete and now apps are almost making chart-plotters obsolete. While I bet people will fall into a pro/con paper chart group by age lines, I wonder even if older people now days will chose to spend $$$ on paper charts when they have multiple electronic back ups. I mean I just spent $360 on used chart cards for my current older chart-plotter and I could have gotten a new (smaller) unit with USA charts for about the same price so to get paper charts also seems like a lot of wasted beer money.

[El Pinguino]

Over the years I have built up of a modest local (paper) portfolio bit by bit... Always one on the chart table. Offshore ? You can cross the top of the South Pacific with two, the bottom of the South Pacific with one ... plus a landfall chart. Not a massive investment.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Not a massive investment.

That's true for crossing a large empty ocean. But not for coastal cruising from Boston to Key West.

[tkeithlu]

When I retired, I made 2/3 of the desk in my lab into my chart table. Whether I get the paper chart by printing tiles from Maptech, screen shots from OPCN (which regrettably does not tile charts), or a cruising guide, I put the paper charts down, cover them with a sheet of polycarbonate, and plot my position every half hour with a dry erase marker. OCPN is on the monitor in front of my wheel, and there is a GPS with a crude map on the instrument panel, but do you really want to to be the person who has to say "Oh (expletive), I don't know where the (expletive) I am" when a puff of smoke rises from you megabucks integrated glass cockpit screen? As I taught field research students (primatologists): Never go into the field (ocean) dependent on anything electronic. For them, it could be months of work and thousands of dollars spent getting to way the (expletive) out to do their dissertation research; for you it is the sinking feeling that you don't know where the next port is or how to get there. I did the same thing as a private pilot.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

That's true for crossing a large empty ocean. But not for coastal cruising from Boston to Key West.

I was talking about the investment in my coastal charts.... spread over a few years.

Try passage planning in this lot on an iphone or ipad 'app'..

'Righto chaps, gather round my ipad... this is the plan...stop shoving Smithers! everyone will get a look... OK...who has the charger????'