Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

updating charts

The "Alliance for safe navigation" is a tool to sell chart updates.

In reality, the best, brand new, updated charts (paper or electronic) have hundreds of errors, mostly minor. Updates will remove perhaps 1%/year of errors.

The touted updates are mostly to buoyage etc in commercial ports. Even if you are off in a buoy or two, it is easy enough to stay out of trouble with a GPS and chartplotter.

The contirbution that constantly updating charts woudl make to safety is tiny. I challenge anyone to produce data showing its value in real life.

The money would be better spent on AIS, and/or backup to electroinc charts, better anchors radar, better nav lights etc.. You can buy a spare laptop, charts and a spare GPS for the price of a few chart updates.

Messages In This Thread