NOAA MBTiles

[P_Dub]

Do as you think, but that does not change the law.

[requiem]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

Raster Charts are the same as paper charts and will be mandatory to carry on board for many years to come.

Here is the IMO implementation schedule for mandatory ECDIS:


But, regarding the ENC transition: RNC are valid for carriage only if equivalent ENC coverage is unavailable. Thus, one shouldn't assume RNC will be maintained as an alternative in the electronic world. (Even if you do prefer the lovely crinkly edges of hand-drawn fjords.)

Unfortunately small boats including recreational users have been largely left behind. Rather than promoting ENC for all, and encouraging training/education, there seems to be the assumption that people will either stick with some form of degraded paper product or go with non-standardized 3rd party charts.

I expect requirements for small boats will eventually evolve in a similar fashion to visual distress signals: some countries (like the US) will (or have already) approve use of an ECS just as they've approved LED flares. Other countries may take years to get around to something similar.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

Raster Charts are the same as paper charts and will be mandatory to carry on board for many years to come. So until this is change in the shipping acts laws, you should keep as it is.

Thank you.

Paper charts are not mandatory nor are raster the industry is in transition to vector and vector charts are superior in all forms to raster

[P_Dub]

You can put all the bla bla bla of IMO, so long as the Shipping act of a country is not change, it will still be mandatory to carry charts.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by P_Dub

You can put all the bla bla bla of IMO, so long as the Shipping act of a country is not change, it will still be mandatory to carry charts.

Shipping rules normally align as per the IMO convention as that’s part of the convention. There is no mandatory carriage requirements for commercial ships that fit a approved IMO ECDIS system . What part of that don’t you understand.

Tme production of paper charts is going the way of the do do. Hydrographic offices now build digital databases of all new surveys directly.

[P_Dub]

La réponse est clairement oui : tous les navires, de commerce, de pêche ou de plaisance,
ont obligation d’avoir à leur bord les cartes marines correspondant aux eaux dans lesquelles
ils naviguent.
Choix des cartes à votre bord
Les cartes marines, aussi appelées cartes maritimes ou hydrographiques, sont des représentations
graphiques indiquant les plans d’eau, notamment les profondeurs, les dangers sous-marins, les
voies de circulation, les aides à la navigation et les zones côtières voisines. Elles servent
à faciliter la navigation et sont publiées par le Service hydrographique de chacun des pays.

[P_Dub]

Extract from the law:-
The answer is clearly YES : all vessels, commercial, fishing or pleasure craft are required to have onbord the nautical marine charts for the waters where they are sailing.
Choice of charts:-
Notwithstanding the fact that you have ECS onbord, the marines charts of the proper Hydrographic service for the area must be available at hand and ready to use in case of emergency. They must be used for the navigation.

[requiem]

As mentioned the IMO bits often drive such changes via the SOLAS convention. For example, the UK's Merchant Shipping Act now includes SOLAS V via "ambulatory reference", meaning they take effect as soon as chapter V is updated.

P_Dub, I think you are more on point when it comes to smaller boats which are largely ignored by SOLAS: they lack the resources to implement ECDIS, which leaves them only paper. Exceptions to this must be carved out by each individual country. The SOLAS stance is ECDIS w/ ENCs counts as paper, ECDIS w/ raster does not, and ECS do not.

Since I'm curious how smaller vessels may be impacted, I took a look around to see how small commercial vessels are handled in a few different countries. (Pleasure boats are often left out.)

The UK allows electronic charting on smaller MCA Code and fishing vessels under 24 meters (MGN 293 and MGN 319). This means they can use ENCs in place of paper, but not RNCs if ENCs are available. Australia appears to have done similarly; their standards for ECS are provided in Annexes B & C of the National Standard for Commercial Vessels section C7C. They don't state a preference between ENC and RNC. In the US, an ECS certified against the RTCM standard may be used in place of paper.

[requiem]

Going back to earlier topics, the link to https://gis.charttools.noaa.gov/ does appear to be back up; it was likely just a brief outage. At present, a few charts I've been watching on https://charts.noaa.gov/InteractiveCatalog/nrnc.shtml are still present, even though they are canceled as of today.

I'll keep an occasional eye out to see when they might drop off, since that could be a surprise should someone decide to do a clean OpenCPN install and find some expected ones no longer there.

[mgrouch]

It seems NOAA shut down RNC tile server but their ENC viewer doesn’t work either most of the times I try it. I tried different browsers and OSes.

[rgleason]

Noaa has been sending an unusual number of notices regarding server issues, but new servers are now online and hopefully this situation will get better.

Originally Posted by mgrouch

It seems NOAA shut down RNC tile server but their ENC viewer doesn’t work either most of the times I try it. I tried different browsers and OSes.

[requiem]

My recommendation would be to add a note to the manual cautioning that due to the retirement schedule, NOAA's raster collection will have increasingly significant gaps in coverage. Reasons below....

Originally Posted by requiem

I shall have to check again after the next cancellation to see if that number drops. One to watch might be 18626, Elk to Fort Bragg, due to be canceled June 1st.

Ok, as of this evening, June 2nd, the RNC charts for both 18626 (Elk to Fort Bragg) and 18647 (Drakes Bay) are no longer listed on NOAA's chart locator, and if you update the RNC chart catalogs they are also gone from that list. If you don't update the catalog and attempt a download, an error is displayed. Edit: The number of charts in the RNC collection for California has now dropped from 62 to 49.

The next charts in the SF Bay region slated to disappear come October will be the 18645 (Gulf of the Farallones), 18651 (SF Bay - Southern Part), and 18657 (Carquinez Strait).

In other places, the four harbor charts covering the San Juan Islands are on the chopping block. To the East, charts covering the Chesepeake Bay, the North Carolina coast, and a few off the Georgia coast will also be retired later this year. This isn't an exhaustive list, merely the easiest to spot.

[PippaB]

Originally Posted by requiem

My recommendation would be to add a note to the manual cautioning that due to the retirement schedule, NOAA's raster collection will have increasingly significant gaps in coverage. Reasons below.....

Exactly. It will be a tough task to keep every O catalog up to date with the piecemeal raster removals by the various hydrographic offices. There will still be threads about broken catalogs, but why not a note in the manual that explains the raster charts are being phased out, catalogs may become out of date as that happens, ...

[nohal]

Originally Posted by PippaB

Exactly. It will be a tough task to keep every O catalog up to date with the piecemeal raster removals by the various hydrographic offices. There will still be threads about broken catalogs, but why not a note in the manual that explains the raster charts are being phased out, catalogs may become out of date as that happens, ...

The US catalogs are provided by NOAA, so there is no problem. Of course if the user does not update them, we can't fix it.
Rest of the world is maintained on a best effort basis, I simply don't have time to check all of them every day or week. And given the reliability of the HOs and the frequency with which they keep moving the stuff around without any reason we have seen over the years, it will probably not get much worse with the chart removals...

[rgleason]

As Pavel sayts, provided users update their NOAA chart catalogs, there will not be a problem.
A statement in the manual might be helpful to explain the missing charts.