I'm curious. Do you still use paper charts when cruising in unfamiliar waters? Why?

First Loran, Now my charts! Is there no end!? What would I do with my Nav Station? My exceptionally well designed (if I do say so myself) CHART TABLE??? How could I lord my hard-earned celestial navigation skills (I'm almost always within 12 miles) over the crew?? What's next, John? My baggywrinkle? My Atari? Deep-six charts, indeed!

Captain, the bulk of my cruising has been on the Maine coast, which is bluff and rocky and foggy. My evolution has gone like this:

Charts got expensive - substitute the ChartKit except for specific places where it isn't adequate.

Loran C became available for $600 - got one (Apelco, very difficult to use. Had to write my own manual for it so normal people could use it).

A few years later, added another Apelco with a plotting display. Very buggy firmware (the people down in Coral Gables were on a first-name basis with me). GPS was coming along so some bugs were never fixed, but even so being able to see our track and to place waypoints near dangers (as well as use them in the normal way) made things a lot easier. Now running two Loran C with separate antennas.

When they took off SA, got a GPS (Garmin GPSmap 76) and not too long after started running the output into a PC with Fugawi charting software. Still running both Loran and at some point in there a small radar.

The Garmin has a quite small but high-resolution display, and a basic set of outline charts plus a database of about 18,000 aids to navigation, and it can operate on internal batteries. It's waterproof and it floats. It's good backup against the PC crashing, just as the Loran was (since they've recently shut down the system) backup against the GPS or the GPS system going down.

Once we started using the charting s/w we stopped actively using the paper charts while underway, but we always had them ready in their zippered plastic envelope and open to the correct page in case we needed them. The PC never did crash - yet. And only once, long ago, was the GPS system down for a couple hours, at least when we were using it. We continued to use the paper ones for planning as even with a 14" laptop screen it's difficult to cover a decent area and stay legible. The laptop, incidentally, was by a good margin the single biggest drain on our batteries, as it generally ran 24 hours/day at three amps or so.

GPS is much more easily jammed (intentionally or otherwise) than Loran - I'm dismayed that they've shut Loran C down in the US and Canada and hope that decision will be reversed before it's too late.

The system I set up over time was designed to degrade gracefully, and I see no reason to change that. When all the lights go out, paper charts and a protractor will still work. I also keep a cheap plastic sextant on board, not for celestial navigation but for (very) occasional use in piloting.

Side note: My brother was skipper of Incat 050 (Devil Cat, Top Cat, now Mananan) when the Navy had her as HSV-X1 Joint Venture. She was certified to operate without paper charts and did not carry any on board. My bro didn't say how he felt about that. Those big catamaran ferries normally operate with ChEng, Navigator and Master in three big chairs on the bridge and a single roving firewatch below. The Navy found that it took a crew of 35 to take her to sea and keep her there, but the bridge watch was still three men. IIRC there wasn't enough flat space up there to actually spread out a full-size paper chart.

Added: This ended up in rap and hip-hop, did you know? ;-) I found it because the system emailed me when you posed it.

If your boat has any kind of electrical issues and you don't have a battery backup for the GPS, you should either have a backup hand held GPS or Paper Charts, compass and Sextant as a backup.

Coast Guard still requires paper charts to be carried on Charters.

Emergencies come fast and being unprepared can cost you your life and passengers. Having and a Emergency Destress location Trasmitter is also a very good idea, manditory on most charters.

You should ALWAYS have paper chart back-ups. If there is a power outage or failure you may not have a GPS available for navigation. Navigation at sea should always also have the heavens to steer by.

Ed. Zimmerman, Jr.

USS UNITED STATES Foundation

USSUNITEDSTATES@Yahoo.com

yes sure......In first place no option bcz of old shipz....

and paper charts are fun.......

U get port stay just bcz u dont have a chart for a voyage....

Ex- For voyage to French Polynesia frm Penang, Malasiya we had a good 2 dayz of port stay just bcz we didn't have had 4 charts required for the voyage.....:-)

So fun...........