Paper Charts or Just Electronic

[edexter]

You can have any noaa maps custom printed on durable paper of various weights etc. By Home - NOAA Charts . Great company, they are a small family biz in Maryland.

[lordgeoff]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

Good luck navigating in coral lagoons, where the depth can go from 60 feet to 2 feet between the depthfinder location and the bow.

Man. Am I going to have to explain how I navigate in every circumstance?
Coral lagoons are relatively easy. NEVER cruise through a coral lagoon
Unless you are doing it in full sunlight. The bomies stand out like dogs balls. NEVER anchor in a Pacific lagoon unless you can see a clear sandy patch to drop the pick or expect to irretrievably tangle your chain and anchor.
Even the best paper charts (and therefore electronic charts) will have errors.
Many of the electronic charts will tell you stuff that will sink your boat can and will be up to 1NM or more out of whack. ANYWHERE your charts can and will be wrong.
At least with a plotter, when the path turns pear shaped you can always turn around and follow your electronic track and be pretty confident you will get out safely.
Without a good plotter and good commercial electronic charts you are making your life more difficult for no purpose.
To me navigation is a bit like playing poker.
Always trust everyone but always cut the deck.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by lordgeoff

Agree. If I was at the helm and on my Left was the worlds best celestial navigator with the best sextant and charts and on my right is the most incompetent newbie with a good chart plotter and I was navigating a difficult passage who would I consult? Neither.
I would be watching my most reliable piece of equipment the depth sounder. I would cast my eye regularly to the chart plotter to confirm what I was seeing agrees with why I am expecting from my planning. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>The rest is the Eyeball Mk1.

Pretty true, except for: what would a guy with a sextant be doing when the issue in this example is coastal piloting, not navigating across vast empty expanses of ocean?

[lordgeoff]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

Pretty true, except for: what would a guy with a sextant be dnoing when the issue in this example is coastal piloting, not navigating across vast empty expanses of ocean?

Ha. Good question Stu. Crossing “vast” oceans or tight coastal navigation the guy with the sextant and paper charts would be the Bar Bitch keeping up with cocktail/sundowner duties.
I appreciate the skills of the old ways but seriously...
Another consideration is can you imagine if 90% (?) of Cruisers Forum users were driving their new boats around any cruising area using sextant, tables charts? Scary thought.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

Pretty true, except for: what would a guy with a sextant be doing when the issue in this example is coastal piloting, not navigating across vast empty expanses of ocean?

Taking horizontal sextant angles...........
Most accurate way of ascertaining your position in relation to the land but not very even remotely practical in a dynamic environment.

[Pizzazz]

Let me caution everyone about depth sounders. If power runs out your depth sounder will stop working. The only absolutely reliable way to measure depth is with a lead line and we should all carry one and practice frequently, especially in narrow harbor entrances with cross wind and busy traffic. Take one reading per minute (while steering the boat), plot it on the paper chart and later share it with OpenCPN users who can benefit from your hard work.

The above may seem ridiculous to the average boater but this discussion on paper vs. electronic, and related discussions on sextant+data book vs. a phone app vs. a GPS, SSB vs. satellite, water maker vs. tankage vs. rain catchment are exactly the same. If it gives you the kicks to measure depth with a lead line, by all means do so. If you like plotting on paper charts, definitely do it. But it is futile to pretend that it is better or safer to have them even as a backup. How do you do weather routing on paper charts?

If you have not used paper charts in a few months and power goes out, you should switch to a back up electronic device with familiar vector charts. If you go back to paper, you will have forgotten half of the tricks how to use them and it is far more likely that you will forget sth, plot your position wrong or make a silly mistake. If you say, this is why you need to practice regularly on paper charts, then please remember to practice with the lead line as well.

We need to look at navigation for safety as a whole, including training, likelihood of errors (far easier to make a calculation error plotting your position on paper vs. forgetting to zoom in/out and checking against radar), ease of updating charts, system integration, there are tens of factors. It is too easy to say, the paper chart is perfect, it is navigator's error. Yes, people do make errors when they are tired, happy, in love, etc. The chart plotter minimizes these errors by automating many common calculations. For this reason alone it is a better and safer device. The rest is an academic discussion. No, not academic, just rug chewing.

SV Pizzazz

[barryglewis]

Coastal nav with sextant: Used sextant and compass for 18months commercially on v small 50 ft barge around New Britain in mid 70s. Horizontal and vertical angles. Had to get a formula for vert angles where base of object sustantially below horizon. Speed about 5 knots, offlying reefs 2, 3 5 20 and 25 miles offshore, all unlit. No radar. Had radar on next vessel, "huge" 100ton capacity, radar was magic!!
Now long way from home, in the Med, got here from Opua NZ primarily with tablets, Navionics , Plan2Nav as backup, awfull program. Felt way gingerly into using them, but although still carry sextant tables, plotting sheets and v small scale charts, take a sight once a year to keep hand in! Paper chart lives on chart table, on passage plot a gps posn daily. Tablet's GPS and nav package work very well for me.
Barry

[jman1974]

I was beginning to feel the expense of carrying band buying paper charts was over caution and overkill, until... Last year we had some erroneous electrical work done which left one of our batteries not charging and first the radio then the plotter failed, we diverted to a port and navigated in only using paper. And iPhones..

[StuM]

Originally Posted by jman1974

I was beginning to feel the expense of carrying band buying paper charts was over caution and overkill, until... Last year we had some erroneous electrical work done which left one of our batteries not charging and first the radio then the plotter failed, we diverted to a port and navigated in only using paper. And iPhones..

Anyone using electronic navigation should have ample battery powered backup.



Perosnally I carry a Garmin Map76, Inreach, phone(s), tablet and both a 14,000 mAh recharge pack and a little AA powered recharger. Plus lots of AA alkaline batteries.

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by StuM

Anyone using electronic navigation should have ample battery powered backup.



Perosnally I carry a Garmin Map76, Inreach, phone(s), tablet and both a 14,000 mAh recharge pack and a little AA powered recharger. Plus lots of AA alkaline batteries.

I agree. I have two plotters, 3 tablets, 2 phones, 2 laptops, Garmin handheld battery operated plotter, inreach, portable solar panel in grab bag.

I don't have all this stuff because I'm paranoid it's just collected over the years. When I replace a tablet I keep the old one etc.

We have so much redundancy, yes a huge lightning strike may take everything out but it would also screw the compasses as well.

[lordgeoff]

Originally Posted by StuM

Anyone using electronic navigation should have ample battery powered backup.



Perosnally I carry a Garmin Map76, Inreach, phone(s), tablet and both a 14,000 mAh recharge pack and a little AA powered recharger. Plus lots of AA alkaline batteries.

And you can store all your electronics in
the oven and they should be protected from lightning. (Faraday Cage)
Just make sure you take them out BEFORE you preheat the oven for the Sunday Roast....

[transmitterdan]

It is next to impossible for a hand held GPS or tablet to be damaged by a lightning strike on the boat. They are well designed against such damage because they have to meet strict regulatory emission limits. The same design features that prevent radio emissions also protect handhelds against lightning.

Sticking them in ovens is kind of silly but if it makes you feel better there isn’t any harm I guess. A better idea is storing handhelds in a well painted mild steel ammo case. Even better is to keep one in a ditch/emergency bag. Put plenty of batteries (10) in there as well.

[barnakiel]

The number of iPads and AGM batteries onboard is irrelevant to the matter.


One iPad is not an ALTERNATIVE method of navigation (to another ... iPad).


The point is to have another method at hand and ready to switch over at any given moment.


Inshore, you chuck that iPad overboard and go by the eye.


And if you pilot by the eye, then why not check the sounder reading against the map? Etc.


Offshore, you go by the stars.


To be technically correct, one should never rely on one method of position finding WHILE / IF an alternative method is available. E.g. do not sail blindfolded inshore (remember that Bora accident), do not go offshore without a basic sextant, some printed almanac and skills to use them.


Navigating by sextant and sun is as simple as a hammer and a pound of nails. If you cannot handle this you should stay ashore playing draughts - for chess is beyond you too). (applicable generally only to longer offshore passages)



Not that I am religious but just common sense seems to dictate such rules. Always have a plan B - also on the water!


Cheers,
b.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

All of us need to acknowledge the fact that the world is moving away from paper (water proof or not) at nearly the speed of light. Just as we learned how to use a set of dividers, parallel rule and the like we now have to learn electronic charts and their systems.

We have to set up electronic systems that are reliable enough just like we had to have water proof storage for our paper charts. Multiple GPS units are necessary. And one or two must use batteries which we must keep a few days fresh supply on board. There are other best practices surrounding electronic systems too.

I strongly feel it would be better to discuss and learn the best ways to run a paper chart free boat than clinging to the quaint notion that paper and a sextant will save us when all else fails. It simply won’t and in the not distant future paper charts will not be available. They won’t keep printing them just for cruisers because cruisers won’t pay the true cost (thousands of $/€/£ per year) of maintaining the paper production process. Heck 90% of cruisers refuse to pay today’s very low cost for up to date paper if we are honest about it.

Just because the world is moving away from paper as a primary source of navigation doesn’t mean the are going away totally.

You can never have a totally reliable electronic system. By the same time paper is not totally reliable, it just has different vulnerabilities and drawbacks so unless you are really unlucky, it will serve as an adequate backup to electronics if the all fail.

Citing cost of printing is a straw man argument rooted in the 1970s. On demand printing is slowly taking over, in full color no less. Which is bringing costs down not driving them up.

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by Adelie

Citing cost of printing is a straw man argument rooted in the 1970s. On demand printing is slowly taking over, in full color no less. Which is bringing costs down not driving them up.

While you are right that on-demand printing is a thing only a certain few printers can print dimensionally correct charts. I would not trust a chart printed at Fed-Ex/Kinkos.

Officially certified paper charts are expensive compared to our budget and getting more so. If you know of cheap official printed chart sources with pricing then a thread should be started. Many people, including me, would be grateful for such a listing.

For people who were brought up in an electronic world or us old fogeys that learned electronics over the past 50 years, the idea that paper is just as reliable as electronic charts sounds silly. It is easy to have multiple redundant charting systems for a fraction of the cost of paper charts. Updating electronic charts takes but a few minutes each month.

It’s all in what we learn and are comfortable with. I am 99.999% certain my electronic charts will never fail completely. We have 7 different electronic chart systems on board with 3 independent sources of power. The GPS-78 needs only 2 AA batteries. Same for the GPS-76. Two or more of these systems will always be available.