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NOAA To Stop Printing Nautical Charts

9K views 67 replies 26 participants last post by  smurphny 
#1 ·
NOAA announces end of traditional paper nautical charts

NOAA's Office of Coast Survey, which creates and maintains the nation's suite of a thousand nautical charts of U.S. coastal waters, has announced major changes ahead for mariners and others who use nautical charts. Starting April 13, 2014, the federal government will no longer print traditional lithographic (paper) nautical charts.

Since 1862, those lithographic nautical charts-available in marine shops and other stores-have been printed by the U.S. government and sold to the public by commercial vendors. The decision to stop production is based on several factors: the declining demand for lithographic charts, the increasing use of digital and electronic charts, and federal budget realities.

"With the end of traditional paper charts, our primary concern continues to be making sure that boaters, fishing vessels, and commercial mariners have access to the most accurate, up-to-date nautical chart in a format that works well for them," said Capt. Shep Smith, chief of Coast Survey's Marine Chart Division. "Fortunately, advancements in computing and mobile technologies give us many more options than was possible years ago."

NOAA will continue to create and maintain other forms of nautical charts, including the increasingly popular Print-on-Demand (POD) charts, updated paper charts available from NOAA-certified printers. NOAA electronic navigational charts (NOAA ENC®) and raster navigational charts (NOAA RNC®), used in a variety of electronic charting systems, are also updated weekly and are available for free download from the Coast Survey website. NOAA announced a new product as well: full-scale PDF (Portable Digital Format) nautical charts, available for free download on a trial basis.

The world of navigation is benefitting from advances in technology, Smith explained. He said that NOAA will consult with chart users and private businesses about the future of U.S. navigation, especially exploring the use of NOAA charts as the basis for new products.
 
#2 ·
My first reaction was "OH NO". But... in my early learning sailing days, charts and basic instruments were all we had. Then comes the techno-geek erra. You really don't "need" a paper chart anymore unless you want one. When I "charted up" last month when we got our boat, I didn't buy the paper charts anyway. I bought water proof, tear proof, indestructable charts. As long as the data is provided to mariners and "print your own" is available... save the money.

Dave
 
#5 ·
My first reaction was "OH NO". But... in my early learning sailing days, charts and basic instruments were all we had. Then comes the techno-geek erra. You really don't "need" a paper chart anymore unless you want one.
Or, unless you need one...

Your imagination is lacking, if you can't envision a situation where a paper chart might be a really, REALLY nice thing to have... :)
 
#4 ·
The CHS (Canadian Hydrographic Service - equivalent to NOAA) stopped printing paper charts over a year ago. The print-on-demand charts that replaced them do not have as good definition in the fine print, the colour separation is inferior and the paper is flimsy; these charts will not last anywhere near as long on a small boat. Progress...

Yes I have a chart plotter, but you can't beat paper chatrs for voyage planning, gunk-holing or when the electrics fail.
 
#8 ·
The gubment giveith and the gubment taket away, curses on the gubment!
I wonder what the courts will think of your GPS data records in an accident case? "Oh, you didn't have a recording data plotter?" " Why don't you have a 5k$ course recording plotter, with its 1000Amhr batteries necessry to continuly record your weekend sailing trip on your plodder 19?"
This is just another case of people who know nothing about what they are doing desiding what is best for the recepients of their actions. What's next, the CG charging you for safety and complyance inspections?
 
#10 ·
The gubment giveith and the gubment taket away, curses on the gubment!
Oh come on.

We are terribly spoiled. I know of no other country where the information for nautical charts is made available completely free. Of course this is how it SHOULD be since we already have paid for it with our taxes. But try to tell this to other governments. Everywhere outside the good ole' USA you pay through the nose for it.
 
#11 ·
People complain about government waste, then complain more when the government gets efficient!

I don't know about the specific economics of their offset litho and digital presses, but here we switch to digital for quantities below about 5,000. I imagine that for most regions they sell fewer than 5,000 charts a year, so digital is the smart way to do it.

Wouldn't the quality of the printing of the digital charts depend on who you buy them from? Our large-format digital printers can produce more detail than our offset presses, and we can print a bigger variety of substrates. Wouldn't it be cool to have all your charts on Tyvek?

Hmmm... Maybe I should suggest to sales that we become a NOAA-certified printer...
 
#17 ·
Yes, I agree that we are spoiled, BUT, without getting into a political discustion, who made us this way?
We are a government of the people, FOR, the people. The government is not supposed to be a money making process for the benefit of a few at the top or to support the rest of the world, it is supposted to be for the benifit of WE, all the people under this government.
We the people work, pay our taxes, and elect people to run this country for the benefit of we, the people.
I, as a sailor, know that when I take my boat out that I have acknowaged that I must be competent in my abillities, knowledgable of the laws and rules governing my actions while sailing, and shall at all times manage my craft for the safety and enjoyment of ALL who share the waters with me.
I will be the first to step up a pay a few dollars extra to cover the "printing" cost for up-to-date charts IF i know that that is what it takes, but to simply take that ability out of my hands is a rather thoughless action of certain 'gubment' officials. To say that you can go down to your 'local' chart maker and get your charts is a step back in time to the 1500 and 'here be dragons'. When did he last update his data? How sharp is his printer, how smear proof his ink?
Oh, you say, print your own. I don't have a printer that will print over 8 1/2 x 14, do you? I don't carry an onboard computer, laptop, or surface, and while a chart plotter system would be wonderful it isn't in my budget this year or next or even the forseable future, the GPS was a major buy. I, like most of my sailing buddies, are NOT in the 2% or even the 10% bracket.
We sail the rivers, lakes, bays and coastal waters of the Gulf for our own pleasure and to fullfill our dreams of exploration, find new places and have fun doing it. We use our charts to resonablly, safely, go into waters unknown to us.
I guess we had better practice up using lead lines, range finders, and set dragon watches on the bow.
 
#22 ·
I will be the first to step up a pay a few dollars extra to cover the "printing" cost for up-to-date charts IF i know that that is what it takes, but to simply take that ability out of my hands is a rather thoughless action of certain 'gubment' officials. To say that you can go down to your 'local' chart maker and get your charts is a step back in time to the 1500 and 'here be dragons'. When did he last update his data? How sharp is his printer, how smear proof his ink?
You don't have any idea what 'Print on Demand' NOAA charts are, do you?

Have no fear, this service is not going away:

Print On Demand Charts
 
#20 ·
As soon as the pdf's are available, it's a pretty easy process to select the charts you want, email them off, and have them printed out by custom print shops. Then you can get them printed on anything from paper to Mylar film, for just a couple of bucks.

The fact that the government is getting out of the printing business and sending this function back to private industry seems like a win all the way round.
 
#21 ·
As soon as the pdf's are available, it's a pretty easy process to select the charts you want, email them off, and have them printed out by custom print shops. Then you can get them printed on anything from paper to Mylar film, for just a couple of bucks.

The fact that the government is getting out of the printing business and sending this function back to private industry seems like a win all the way round.
Who prints full size color charts for just a couple of bucks? Most of the times I've looked, the prices are around $50 or more for that sort of printing, making the $20 charts from official printers the best deal. I'm an engineer and most of the places I work have large scale printers available. I've used those (buying my own ink and paper) to print dozens of charts. I don't always have that capability though (I'm a consultant/contractor), so if there were a source of cheap chart printing, I'd love to hear about it.
 
#27 ·
Other than for Narragansett Bay itself, I've not purchased all the separate charts in years. I have two Maptech chartbooks on top of my nav station with everything from NJ to ME. Check the front glossary, turn to the correct page and slip it back into the clear plastic cover. Way to go. They are my backup to electronic nav. I assume they will remain available.
 
#28 · (Edited)
I have not bought paper charts for a number of years. I think the last Maptech Chartbook I have is around five years old. Ever since NOAA RNC and ENC charts became available, I have been printing my own up to date charts, downloaded from NOAA on a little inkjet printer I keep aboard. As I have posted here before, printing up your own custom little 8x11 chartbooks, with infinite scale options, is extremely helpful. Color is optional but I've never found it necessary. These chartbooks can be printed directly from plotter software (actually Sea Clear does the best job of printing without annoying corporate logos), showing notes, routes, markers, etc. and can be used to write on as you go, serving as your logbook. This seems like a no-brainer to me, given modern technology. You have the go-to electronic nav and paper backup/log as well. I have referred to these many times when planning for currents. They give a real-world account about what actually occurs in certain spots, when currents actually turn, etc. Marking your track with time and speed, gives an excellent record of actual events which can be used for subsequent planning.

A laserjet printer would be better but I find that laserjets will not work on my converter, even though it is a "pure sine wave" model. I cnnot ever remember water destroying any chart but even if this happened, another would be easy to print.
 
#32 · (Edited)
No...

Let me be clear - I don't have any "objection" to electronic charts, I use them all the time... I simply believe that it's not the best seamanship to rely upon them EXCLUSIVELY, without any alternative means of navigating in the event of a failure...

The paper chart of Grand Bruit is no more accurate than the C-Map in my photo that placed me onshore, there's an uncorrected anomaly in the charting of that portion of the south coast of Newfoundland... However, during my approach to that harbor, it was my reference to the paper chart that first alerted me to the sense that something wasn't quite right...

That's the primary danger of relying exclusively on e-charts, it's simply too easy- particularly for those of lesser experience - to follow the boat's icon straight into danger. Perhaps it's just me, but I find piloting by referring/cross-checking on paper forces one's eyes outside of the boat with a bit more regularity... Lots of folks out there today are practicing a pretty 'lazy' form of navigating, the trust and faith I see people putting in the accuracy of e-charts is astonishing... Particularly in places like the Bahamas, where cruisers routinely disregard the cautions against piloting tricky areas in poor light, trusting the Explorer Charts to have plotted each and every coral head with pinpoint precision... And, don't get me started on the prevalence of interfacing autopilots to distant waypoints, sailors should best leave that Lazy Man's practice to Sea Ray drivers... :)

Pretty spooky, some of the Stupid Cruiser Tricks are being performed as a consequence of the treatment of navigation as a video game :) I know some disagree, but I'm firmly convinced that the skipper of RULE 62 never would have attempted to enter that cut in the Bahamas that night a couple of years ago, without the aid of a chartplotter... But, we'll never know, of course...

 
#31 ·
This is a subject I feel very strongly about.

Cruising, especially passage making, without paper charts is very poor seamanship. I have had my electronics fail - both the older electronics (C80 from lightning strike) and new electronics (E80s on corrosion on HSB). Given enough time, yours will too. THey are electronics!

Paper charts can be waterproof, and they can go into sleeves to stay dry. You can also make a copy of the paper charts and pencil plot on them in case you lose your electronics to assist in DR.

Don't get me wrong - I love my GPS and chart plotter. It sure is easy and convenient. But backups are absolutely necessary or one of these days, you are gong to get caught blindsided.

Now I do have exceptions to this. For those who are sailing local waters, lakes, etc... you really don't have to have paper charts. You could undoubtedly find your way back without any aids. But the thought of doing any kind of cruising or passage making without them is akin to those who don't think they need a VHF because they have a cell phone.

My opinions.

Brian
 
#36 ·
This is a subject I feel very strongly about.

Cruising, especially passage making, without paper charts is very poor seamanship. I have had my electronics fail - both the older electronics (C80 from lightning strike) and new electronics (E80s on corrosion on HSB). Given enough time, yours will too. THey are electronics!

My opinions.

Brian
That seems pretty harsh. :) I have some friends cruising out of the UK that were in Maine. They were very comfortable with their electronic charting. I think people that are comfortable, don't worry about losing the ships power. They have redundant devices. These folks each had a laptop, a spare(from an upgrade), a small tablet, smart phone with a chart app, onboard Chart plotter and maybe a hand held gps with simple charts.

At any rate, with solar and wind generation onboard, they were covered if something catastrophic happened to the ships wiring.

The gear they had, laptops, smart phone, tablet, isn't too unusual these days. You could find it in a family kitchen.

But for boats that are comfortable with electronic charting as their sole means of navigation, they would not put that trust in one single system or onboard source, they would have several redundant unattached devices.

Not everyone accepts their way, but I know their seamanship is top notch!
 
#40 ·
Tom,

I am sorry it came across harsh, but as I said above, it is something I feel very strongly about.

I have a friend back in St Pete who does not have a single piece of electronics aboard (not even an air conditioner!!) and only steers by paper. He is a long time advocate of celestial navigation. He has crossed the pacific with his family and shuns most modern devices. That does not make his way the best way either.

Let me expound on my story. In circa 2001 we took a lightning strike. It did not hit us, it hit many boats down (an important point, btw). We had two chart plotters - one at the helm and one down below at the nav station. I also had a backup handheld down below (the old Garmin 76? I think it was, remember those, the old black and white thing?). Anyways, the unit at the helm never turned on again. Obviously it was from the lightning strike. THe unit down below powered up fine. I replaced the unit above and everything seemed to work perfectly. Not long after, we took off for the Tortugas. In the middle of the night the old unit locked up. It wouldn't scroll or do anything. We couldn't even get it to power off without tripping the breaker. Luckily, we had the handheld as a backup (the Garmin). It would power up but it would not get a fix. It never worked right again. As it would turn out, after fully rebooting the system on a forced reboot, we got the CP's back up and running and we were fine. But the CP down below was always locking up and acting screwy. Raytheon sent out their techs and finally concluded the unit down below was also the result of lightning... which was NOT apparent at first, as I explained. I suspect that was the same thing that took out my handheld and why it never worked right again.

In 2010, while crossing the gulf, I looked up in the middle of the night and saw that I was running 44 knots. While I realize that I have a fast boat, I am not quite that fast! I looked at the chart plotter and it had me squarely on some parcel of land somewhere in Florida and moments later, my autopilot did an abrupt 180 in the middle of the ocean. We rebooted the system and it came back up fine. I had that problem several times afterwards, and think I finally traced the failure down to corrosion on the HSB to the autopilot. At least, I hope that is it! But a word of warning, when you have all your stuff connected together, a failure on one can lead to a failure of everything.

SO the morale of this story is that I have been burned. I came out of them ok, but I might not have. Electronics will fail eventually. They all will. I believe prudent seamanship is to use as many things at your disposal as possible (within reason) to maintain the safety of your boat and crew. That includes paper charts which do not run on batteries or get hurt by lightning strikes and it includes electronic charting tools which overlay exact positions consistently. There is no reason to rely completely on one or the other that I can comprehend.

Those are my opinions and that is how I run my boat. How others run their boat is of course their prerogative. They may have a different tolerance for risk than I am comfortable with. But I personally would never make a passage on anyone's boat with them if they did not have paper backups and do paper plotting (at the very least consistent positional logging). Experience has taught me otherwise. My guess is that those who rely solely on electronics haven't had that lesson yet. I hope they never do.

Brian
 
#35 ·
The common problem with electronic charts is that they are very often not accurate. The positions of land masses are from the same, often misdrawn graphics in paper charts. Actual GPS points input using these charts as a guide may well put you up on a highway or a beach. I have been looking at anchorages along the ICW and how the NOAA images line up with actual GPS points as recorded in the Doyle's anchor guide. Some land masses are shown where there is actually 30' of water:)
If you are placing complete trust in the video game, you may not notice that things are not as they should be. Dead reckoning traits that we old farts have come to internalize over the years, usually set off some alarm bells. Things like keeping an eye on depth, noticing ranges on things that should align, and reading the water, at least to me, are essential to being confident of position. There are more clues than just a computer screen to tell you if you are where you THINK you are.
 
#44 ·
I did not see "a few more months" anywhere. Please cite your reference for that.
 
#46 ·
John, we both know you ARE a dinosaur - no doubt about it. I have drawers filled with paper charts that have taken on alien life forms from years of non-use. Those same charts are scanned into my GPS Plotter, which I rely on as my primary source of navigation and have yet to have a failure in 11 years of constant operation. It draws very little current, the display is supertwist, which makes it sunlight viewable, and there's NEVER any guesswork as to my EXACT location. The next time we are in the same vicinity, which I sincerely hope is soon, I will give you each and every one of those charts. The aliens within can colonize your boat instead of residing on mine.

Stay safe old friend,

Gary :cool:
 
#55 ·
Raster (RNC)charts are just photocopies of the paper charts, calibrated to work with plotters. Electronic navigation (ENC) charts are vector based which means they are point-based, mapped by showing the locations of known individual points, depths, and objects. That's why they don't have elevation lines for the land masses like the rasters. I don't know how they estimate shoreline location but I'd guess they use the lines from the original rasters. Maybe someone else can fill in on the exact procedure they use to come up with an ENC.
 
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#58 ·
A few years ago, I'd be up in arms about this. But I just did a boat inventory. I currently have us charts on:

1) plotter
2) pc at the nav station (openCPN + CM93, Noaa Raster and Navionics)
3) a couple of handheld GPS kept in my ditch kit (Garmin BlueChart)
4) My Android phone and my wife's iphone (Navioncs, EarthNC, other apps)
5) iPad in the forward cabin (navionics app)

For all of you that worry about a lightning strike...I just dont think it'll take out all of those devices. A leak at the nav station dripping water and ruining all of my charts is more likey. In today's day and age..."meh"

Mostly open source, included, or free stuff too.
 
#59 ·
What do you guys think of NOAA's BookletCharts as paper backups? I print them out every spring and file them away on the boat in case I need them. I don't go offshore, so the smaller format isn't a problem for me.

Have any of you tried them?
 
#60 ·
I find booklet charts to be fairly hard to use, if you're traveling any distance. I have no beef with them being an adequate, although not ideal, backup.

As a side note, many use ink jet printers at home. As all that do would know, the ink will smear when wet. It seems quite less than ideal to use ink jets to print marine charts, unless they are going to be laminated.
 
#65 ·
A few years ago I was docked next to a Canadian flagged boat that had a large lcd or led screen mounted in the cabin bulkhead to display charts. Should have asked the guy more about it. I don't believe it was a touchscreen. It may not have been waterproof but it was surely much larger, probably 20" or so, than most common plotters. One option that does not seem to be available on plotters (at least those available to us mortals) is the ability to attach a large, remote touchscreen. It would be nice to be able to clearly see more of the big picture without having to constantly zoom in and out on a 5-10" micro-screen.
 
#66 · (Edited)
I've run boats with overlarge displays, they're very nice... Just make sure you have a large enough towel or blanket aboard to drape over them at night, if you want to be able to see anything outside of the boat... :)

The late Mike Harker had such an arrangement on his Hunter 49 WANDERLUST... I imagine keeping it on all the time definitely required some amps...

I had the pleasure of meeting Mike in Miami years ago, an extraordinary guy... To the best of my knowledge, he never carried any paper charts aboard WANDERLUST...

 
#68 · (Edited)
I mostly use a little Garmin 376C which I absolutely love. It uses very little energy and is as dependable as hell. But it has a small screen. Also have a Toughbook with C-Maps that ties down right under the dodger. It has a large, daylight capable screen but the thing is a real energy hog so I rarely use it. When the choice is to run the computer or keep the beer cold, well....:rolleyes: An ideal device would be something with the electronics below decks somewhere and a nice sized waterproof touchscreen that could be mounted flat against the cabin side. I cut a square hole through the cabin to mount the radar screen which has worked out really nice. It's now out of the way so it can't snag anything. Having a larger, flush mounted plotter display right next to the radar screen would be ideal. One priority is to eliminate anything that can snag lines. I can always imagine an errant sheet ripping off those pedestal-mounted control heads.

Good point about the night vision with a large screen. Even my little screen in night mode, dimmed down projects a LOT of light.
 
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