Does Anyone Still Use Paper Charts ?

[fishwife]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Someone like to calculate the cost of paper charts I would have needed?

Mark

Someone recently told me that he'd paid £38,000 for a full world folio of British Admiralty charts. I told him he was mad.
Say you only needed 50% of them Mark, still a lot of cheese, wine and beer money

P.

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

Here in the US i've been buying 2/3 size black and white prints. Much cheaper, .

much cheaper. But of course there must be copyright so either your have old paper charts (at whatever size) or your getting a very good deal. But folks can't talk about using paper charts if they dont use the current charts properly updated. And very very very few do.

To those that can afford them, and have the capacity to keep them updated, and the space to store them (and consider the amount of space I would need) then they would make some cruisers happy that they have a good bank of knowledge.

The crap I have seen been circulated around - not least the 50 year old charts copies offered for $5 each in Darwin, and the stuff swapped between cruisers - especially the stuff in the Pacific would unsettle even the most ardent paper buff.

Its fine if you want to cruise a small area. Local knowledge can help keep those charts updated and flipping out $50 or $100 every few years is no problem.
The cost of Australian charts is $35 each (about USD$33!!).

Sure a lot of cruisers are passing around 'cracked' electronic charts that are now out of date and are not paying for the non-pirated real stuff.
However the point needs to be made that no 'normal' cruiser will, on the outset of his circumnavigation, spend the amount needed to have paper for the whole world. They cannot be bought along the way except for a very few countiries captial cities.

Even though threads like "Cruise the world on $500 per month" are only inhabited by lunatics it must be realized that 'normal' cruisers just will not spend thousands of dollars unnecessarily.

So hands up who would buy new paper charts for a circumnavigation?

And thats not a troll-ish question!

As an aside... can I mention to those who are saying they use GPS but not chart plotters that untill the plotter is quite well known -and some like Maxsea are very complicated - they would not understand some of the intricacies that the Electronic folk are suggesting makes them more safer than paper.




Mark

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

much cheaper. But of course there must be copyright so either your have old paper charts (at whatever size) or your getting a very good deal. But folks can't talk about using paper charts if they dont use the current charts properly updated. And very very very few do.

No copyright problems. Real charts (from raster images) printed by a third party. True, to buy all the charts needed for a circumnavigation would be ludicrous, but for something like the entire caribbean sea not such a bad deal.

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

No copyright problems. Real charts (from raster images) printed by a third party. .

OK, I get ya Those Raster charts are offered by the US Governement for free off the NOAA website.

No other countries (ok there is one weird one) that offer charts for free.

Free is good, its safety!

[fishwife]

Just to buy the planning chart for the North Atlantic costs £21.30 (US$34.00) plus shipping, another £5.00 (US$8.00)

P.

[dacust]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

I agree with your entire post too.
Except for the content

Sorry, Dan, just having a bit of fun

OK, that was from an old post, but I'm still chuckling.

Originally Posted by MarkJ

much cheaper. But of course there must be copyright so either your have old paper charts (at whatever size) or your getting a very good deal. But folks can't talk about using paper charts if they dont use the current charts properly updated. And very very very few do.

I think I can talk about old paper charts even though they are outdated. If my electronics fail, I can use those old outdated charts better than nothing at all. I just have to know that once I get to land, the aids to navigation may be wrong, so I have to look with my eyes even closer. But, then I should be doing that even with electronics.

I'll also bet there are many many many (I used 3 many's to match your 3 very's above ) people with chartplotters bought years ago that have never updated their charts.

Originally Posted by MarkJ

To those that can afford them, and have the capacity to keep them updated, and the space to store them (and consider the amount of space I would need) then they would make some cruisers happy that they have a good bank of knowledge.

The crap I have seen been circulated around - not least the 50 year old charts copies offered for $5 each in Darwin, and the stuff swapped between cruisers - especially the stuff in the Pacific would unsettle even the most ardent paper buff.

Its fine if you want to cruise a small area. Local knowledge can help keep those charts updated and flipping out $50 or $100 every few years is no problem.
The cost of Australian charts is $35 each (about USD$33!!).

Sure a lot of cruisers are passing around 'cracked' electronic charts that are now out of date and are not paying for the non-pirated real stuff.
However the point needs to be made that no 'normal' cruiser will, on the outset of his circumnavigation, spend the amount needed to have paper for the whole world. They cannot be bought along the way except for a very few countiries captial cities.

Many PC packages give their world-wide charts on DVD, then you just call them and pay for an unlock code. If this is what you have, this is a big advantage.

But for most chartplotters, you have to buy the chip. Then all the disadvantages of availability applies to them just like paper charts.

People have stuff shipped to themselves at marinas all over the world. Bluewater Charts will ship anywhere. So the disadvantage of either paper charts and electronic cards are not that much of a problem.

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Even though threads like "Cruise the world on $500 per month" are only inhabited by lunatics it must be realized that 'normal' cruisers just will not spend thousands of dollars unnecessarily.

So hands up who would buy new paper charts for a circumnavigation?

I have not bought charts in a while. Content with the old ones for now. But if I was to do a circumnavigation I would buy new paper charts. Not a complete set, but the basics. I would also not buy a complete set of electronic charts. I would use the old world wide set I downloaded from "somewhere", and then maybe buy new updated versions of selected areas. And I probably order them as I went, so changing plans are easier.

Originally Posted by MarkJ

And thats not a troll-ish question!

As an aside... can I mention to those who are saying they use GPS but not chart plotters that untill the plotter is quite well known -and some like Maxsea are very complicated - they would not understand some of the intricacies that the Electronic folk are suggesting makes them more safer than paper.

There are definitely things about electronic charts that make them safer. But there are also a limited set of circumstances that I think paper charts might work when the electronic ones fail. I know you don't agree with this, but it's what I think.

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Mark

I don't really disagree with you that much. But I think you slightly overstate the case for electronics, and slightly overstate the issues with paper charts.

-dan

[Astrid]

I don't as yet have paper charts for a circumnavigation, but that is some years down the road anyways. I do have paper charts for much of the coast of British Columbia, Alaska, and US PNW as well as planning charts. However, I also have GPS chartplotter with most of the North American Pacific coast So, I tend to use both paper and electronic, GPS and sextant depending on the local conditions and chart availability. Would I buy paper charts for a complete circumnavigation, probably not, though I might buy charts for a few of the more important or interesting ports of call. As a rule, I will use anything and everything I have to hand to keep off the rocks and shoals.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by ActiveCaptain

The phone in my pocket (with every chart for the areas I cruise between Maine and Venezuela) and my disconnected iPad will do very well in a lightening strike. If there's enough current to zap the phone in my pocket, it'll likely have killed me too. My wife's phone has every chart as well.

Not so. You don't need to be directly hit by the electrical bolt. There is a GIANT magnetic field that surrounds lightning strikes out to some distance. This can damage electronics in two ways one is to erase magnetic storage media such as hard disks and perhaps certain forms of solid state memory, the magnetic field will also induce enough current in the misc wires and printed circuits of most electronic items to fry them.

For a very very near miss the magnetic field might injure or kill you by inducing a current in your blood, blood is somewhat conductive, triggering a heart attack. But the range for damage to electronics is much greater since wires and printed circuits are much more conductive than blood.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by rebel heart

If it can happen to him, it will happen to you.

Attachment 19839

Don't get me wrong; my team and I work as hard as we can to write the best software we can. But any text on software development will show that more than 50% of projects are either drastically over budget or cancelled all together. People have been building bridges for a long time. Thousands of years of bridge building, basically using the same techniques for the last few hundred. Modern software development has been around for ~10 years (object oriented, discarding function pointers for delegates and events, etc), and the rate of change is stupid fast.

Don't kid your self about bridge building. There's still a learning curve going on there. The design of bridges continues to evolve and failures are the result. Since the early 1800's there has been a major bridge failure at the leading edge of the technology about every 30yr. The Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge failure in 1941 and the Hartford (?)box girder bridge failure in 1970(?) are the most recent examples. We are 'overdue' for another failure at this point, though maybe the current technological push has matured and we won't see big failures due to design issues nearly as often nor will we see the big advances in design. Ask me in another 30yr.

[boatman61]

I guess this all boils down to Old School vs New School...
Old school we got used to a style of sailing that we were comfortable with... 3 bearing fixes, dead reckoning, drift and leeway factors... working our way along contour lines in thick fog... and we did not wreck our boats...
No radar, no chart plotter and no GPS... and were still alive... we learnt to have faith in ourselves and our abilities to navigate complicated coastal tidal waters with just a compass, chart and sounder.
Some of us old fuddy duddies still think thats all we need... but some of us go a bit radical and may buy a GPS... well... who doesn't wanna be trendy....

[RainDog]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

much cheaper. But of course there must be copyright so either your have old paper charts (at whatever size) or your getting a very good deal.

The ones I get are print-on-demand (so always the latest) and $5 a chart. They have most, but not all, of the world covered:

Discounted Nautical Chart Portfolios, Nautical Chart Copies and Reproductions | Bellingham Chart Printers

For example: all of Australia and New Zeeland (about 210 charts) is $1050 USD. Still not cheap, but compared to normal charts a steal.

I cannot believe no one in this thread has stood up for the pure joy of paper charts. Beyond using them for navigation, just flipping through charts and studying them is a joy. I would not want to give that up.

That said, there is no chance paper charts will exist in 50 (or probably 20) years as anything other than a curiosity.

[Capt Phil]

One of the neatest uses I ever saw for old, outdated paper charts was wallpapering a large basement room in a house in Vancouver, Canada. It was owned by a retired pilot (marine, not air) who used to pick them up from commercial vessels he brought into Vancouver Harbour. He had virtually the whole Pacific rim glued to the walls, not all in English, however.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Capt Phil

One of the neatest uses I ever saw for old, outdated paper charts was wallpapering a large basement room in a house in Vancouver, Canada. It was owned by a retired pilot (marine, not air) who used to pick them up from commercial vessels he brought into Vancouver Harbour. He had virtually the whole Pacific rim glued to the walls, not all in English, however.

I can appreciate that. I have a few antique charts hanging in the the house. My criteria for buying them are quite specific: I have to have been on the water shown on the chart, and they have to be charts - no maps. One of my more recent ones is 1859 chart of the Southern Gulf Islands and San Juan Islands from the survey by Capt Richards and the crew of the Plumper. It shows roughly the same area as 3462 and 3441, the charts I use for teaching for teaching coastal navigation.

I once saw a Leroy Niemans silk screen of a 12 meter that was done on the chart of the America's Cup from Australia - very cool.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by Capt Phil

One of the neatest uses I ever saw for old, outdated paper charts was...

Another thing they're really good for is creating gasket material for engine water pumps and other water systems when you need something in a pinch.

[Astrid]

Another thing they're really good for is creating gasket material for engine water pumps and other water systems when you need something in a pinch.

let's see your gps do that.