By Elaine Dickinson, Boat U.S. Magazine, March, 2008
There are many advantages to carrying official paper charts
With the latest marine chartplotters more user-friendly and affordable than ever before, is there still a reason boaters need to carry paper charts? There’s no disputing that marine electronics, particularly GPS, offer boaters peace of mind when it comes to navigation. But technology may also give boaters a false sense of security. Without realizing it, mariners may be relying on outdated information and overlooking the fact that even the latest and most sophisticated electronic system is not foolproof.
“No matter how bulletproof technology appears, it is sufficiently fragile and fails with regularity,” said Roger Jones, a lifelong sailor and BoatU.S. member from Wisconsin. Jones participated in the 2007 Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac. Without warning, their batteries went out in the middle of the race. “Luckily, we also were using the paper charts onboard and were able to locate the nearest harbor of refuge easily,” he said. “But what if we had been 150 miles offshore and didn’t know where we were when the electronics failed?”
NOAA lithographic charts are considered the standard when it comes to paper charts. They are the final product of NOAA’s expert cartographers who collect, interpret and then apply critical chart corrections on an ongoing basis. Unlike electronics, which require boaters to pan out and zoom in, paper charts always provide the “big” picture. “Anytime you zoom in, you’ve lost the relationship with other parts of the chart,” says Richard Sillcox, NOAA’s chief of Chart Update Service. “With paper charts, you can easily see those relationships.”
While NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard keep boaters informed of chart corrections through the weekly Local Notice to Mariners, there is a lag time of several months before the government reprints the charts with those changes. There can be as many as 100 corrections per week. Even Sillcox admits, “Unfortunately, a printed nautical chart is only up-to-date the day it is printed.”
Recently, however, technology has solved the problem of updating paper charts. NOAA has partnered with Minnesota-based OceanGrafix to create a new paper chart, using a sophisticated system to provide more accurate charts that are printed for the customer when the order is placed.
OceanGrafix spent more than five years developing an online, real-time network that allows them to continuously download updated cartographic information directly from NOAA databases. The new paper charts are then printed out only after an order has been placed, using digital image technology and large-format printers.
The OceanGrafix charts are fully up-todate when printed, are NOAA-approved and meet the U.S. Coast Guard carriage requirements for commercial vessels. Compared to standard new editions, the print-on-demand charts are available from two to eight weeks sooner than their lithographic counterparts.
Boaters are going to be the safest when they carry both types of charts — electronics with a GPS interface for the convenience and paper charts as a critical backup. “Electronic systems are great aids and make the boater’s life much simpler,” says David DeGree, OceanGrafix president. “However, nothing beats an up-to-date paper chart for reliability. Why even take the chance?”
Another plus for having updated paper charts is that electronic chart products may contain outdated NOAA data, depending upon when the cartridge or software was purchased and whether the boater has gotten the data updated. This is why when booting up a chartplotter, you see a warning notice from the manufacturer.
“Any part of electronic navigation can — and will — fail,” says Jeff Siegel, a BoatU.S. member in Maine. “Failures usually happen at the worst, most inopportune time. Redundancy of electronics is helpful, but 99% of all boaters don’t have any electronic backup for the failure of the GPS system. Paper charts are the ultimate backup to electronics.
“A few years ago, we were heading out for lunch on a typical short trip along the rocky coast of Maine,” explains Siegel, developer of a boating web site. “Mid-afternoon, we noticed the weather looked like it might be getting worse. The boat had no electronics, and it was time to head home.
“Heavy fog rolled in out of nowhere, and there was general panic about what to do. My wife and I are experienced cruisers and dug out an old, folded up chart. We proceeded to guide the boat through the ‘bad’ area with dead reckoning using the coffeestained chart and no visibility.”
Siegel concludes, “I think paper charts are like insurance today. It’s one of those things you know you need and should buy, even if you hope you don’t have to use it.”
