Basic question regarding charts.

[hellosailor]

I think some of this reflects on the way that so many people these days have no grasp of the technology they rely on, nor of history.

Road maps, given away by gas stations, were designed to make it easier for gasoline customers to consume fuel, by traveling further afield. With the same company's stations always nicely highlighted.

Marine charts were made for basically two purposes:
1-Promoting safe commerce, since everyone gets upset at a major commercial wreck.
And (shh!)
2-Ordnance surveys. Why did the UK make such precisely detailed topo maps of Palestine? Well, because they'd already been to war there (WW1) and it is decidedly convenient, even critical, to have detailed accurate maps of some place you may need to go invade again.

Although the US has quietly re-folded nautical chartmaking into remote imaging and the military....we don't mention that very loudly. But the military need to have precise charts of odd reefs and rocks, or lack of need, has to be balanced against the cost of survey vessels. The sailor who blithely accepts the accuracy of any charts in unimportant parts of the world should really just have a friend scribble "HERE BE DRAGONS" in random spaces, just to help remind them of what they're looking at.

[Dsanduril]

^ I like that - "HERE BE DRAGONS".

I would advocate for carrying the most up-to-date charts you can get (electronic or paper, that's a separate argument). We mostly use electronic but carry a few paper charts that would get us where we're going should something hit the fan. Unfortunately with electronic charts it is altogether too easy to miss the notes about 'from survey data in 1847 with updates through 1951.' That information is still there, but you have to look for it. On paper it was in an ornate title block with lots of fancy lettering and text and you looked at it just out of curiosity if nothing else. With chart quilting and vector charts it starts to blend away. The notes still show up on raster charts, but at least to my eye not with the same impact as on paper.

Its all about learning to use the tool, same as just about anything else in life, but we start to get data overload and may miss these small, but very important points. I know I personally am guilty of it from time-to-time.