Paper Navigational Charts Are a Boaters Must For Safety

This article explores the necessity of a failsafe backup to electronic navigation: traditional NOAA navigational charts.

In this day-and-age you can easily insulate yourself in false sense of security: passwords for emails and bank accounts, OnStar, Mapqwest, GPS in your car or on your boat. But the wonders of today’s technology, while convenient, can have occasion to fail.

When it comes to boating, a false sense of security can lead to trouble at sea. “Collisions account for 80% of all reportable recreational boating accidents and 78% of non-reportable accidents, totaling an estimated insurance loss of over $450 million a year from nearly 100,000 claims,” says a 2007 Hydrographic Services Review Panel report. “A major cause of claims is ‘striking a submerged object’ and groundings, two scenarios in which accurate NOAA surveys and charts can play a major role.”

With electrical or battery failure a possibility, and only a small percentage of boats with backup power sources, relying solely on GPS or a chartplotter can be risky. It goes back to an old sailing rule: “Don’t rely on one method of navigation.” Richard Sillcox, NOAA’s chief of Chart Update Service adds, “Technology is not foolproof, and unforeseen circumstances may affect your ability to take advantage of that technology.” Among serious mariners, the consensus is always this: never rely on only one means of navigation.

The solution? Printed navigational charts. In comparison to the flash and interface of a digital-age navigation solution, a chart may be considered by some as an antique, but in the inopportune moment, when the batteries fail, it’s the chart that will get you to safety.

That’s not to say navigational charts have not entered the 21st century. At present NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) and the U.S. Coast Guard have established consistent methods of gathering cartographic data and uploading it to servers at OceanGrafix, an on-demand navigational chart printer. These daily updates allow every Ocean Grafix print-on-demand (POD) navigational chart to be 100% up to date at the time of printing.

NOAA charts include topographical information such as water depths, height of land, natural features of the seabed, details of the coastline, navigational hazards, and information on tides and man made structures.

This need-to-know-information can be yours by making sure your boat is equipped with an up-to-date navigational chart. Charts are an excellent complement to any digital/electric navigational tool. As electronic screens tend to be small and can be unreadable in bright sunlight, a chart is always readable. And the large format of a chart allows you to see the big picture and detail that would perhaps be lost on small digital screens.

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.”

Another plus for having updated paper navigational 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.

Many recreational mariners are wary of the reliability of electronics. “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.”

In short, navigational charts are a fail-safe backup to electronic systems and in general offer the big picture when it comes to navigating. When you add in the up-to-date-at-time-of-printing features of OceanGrafix POD charts, you have the best of both worlds.