Do any brats use marine charts?

[JamesTXSD]

“Learn to read the water,” he says... “The more you travel an area the better the charts will be,” he says.

Why, I remember a time...

[Brewkid]

Awesome discussion to be going on while I'm in my Captains course. I personally side with Tom. Are you all using the chart to navigate or to plan? If navigation is your answer, how often do you update your course? If you're not updating at some frequency how are you navigating? Are you updating your lat/long with GPS position, or shooting 3 known land targets, or are you using radar rings? How old are your maps? Are you correcting for annual rate of change? Are you dead reckoning? If so, in less than a minute with currents working against you, you're off target anyway.

Im all for one being prepared, and practice is a necessity to keep a perishable skill. But I'm hard pressed to believe when the fog got thick and lands out of sight, and your chartplotter dies you'd reach for a chart instead of a backup GPS unit! I know someone will bring up compasses, and to that I'd ask how many of yours are truley on? Do you have course correction cards? Did you run it with electronics working, or now off as the situation dictates. Yes GPS can fail you, but human error has a much greater fail rate.

Oh, and I learned if you have radar, you shall run it! Who knew?

Have fun guys!
John
Scallywag

[Aurelia]

We carry limited traditional paper charts but try to have at least one of these for the area we travel. We use them for planning mostly.

https://www.fishnmap.com

Greg

[Aurelia]

I teach people to create maps and data for maps professionally and have done so for quite some time. I love maps for air, land, and sea, can can use them all navigationally very well. But I use a Garmin sitting next to another Garmin sitting next to my phone with Navionics loaded and sometimes running at the same time. There is no getting away from that dynamic view of where you are and where you are headed. Maps are great, but I think they are better suited to planning or daydreaming for most rec boaters. But if you go where maps and map data is sparse. Use all you senses and any tool that helps improves awareness.

Greg

[localboy]

[hardee]

I carry paper charts of the area I am in, also a chart book. But, I use mostly, my Raymarine plotter, a smaller Garmin plotter, a Samsung tablet with GPS, and a phone. The last 2 are strictly backup, but often the tablet has the big picture view on. For Desolation Sound and the Broughtons I have a planing "map" that is very useful and usually open on the table.

I have had the plotter go south twice. Once right in Friday Harbor on a bright, clear day, right out in front of the ferry and sea plane section. Unnerving but running VFR was no problem there. And it was my only plotter on board at the time. The second time it went off was crossing Juan de Fuca, relatively calm, mild fog, enough to obliterate the north and south shore. Coincidence I'm sure but just as an Orca surfaced, crossing about 75 ysrds in front of me the screen went off. No problem this time, the little Garmin was up and running. Did the shutdown and restart on the Raymarine and we were back in bisiness.

Electrinics can fail, but I agree, human error in location plotting, especially were there are tidal currents that are moving at multiple knots per hour are going to make DR and even 3 point positioning difficult and inaccurate.

Harvey
SleepyC

[Lollygaggin]

[ken35216]

[starcrafttom]

[Brewkid]

Lollygaggin, that discussion also came up today. I personally wouldn't go out of the way to install a stand alone sounder on a vessel of our size, and if I did, it would be in the version of another chartplotter combo on a separate circuit for redundancy. Chartplotters have come down so much in price, you're talking $100 more for a cheap combo to not follow depthlines home.

Knowledge is a great tool to have no doubt.

John
Scallywag.

[johnr]

We have a laminated placemat on the boat table..yes a placemat...that depicts the San Juan waters. I'm sure you're seen them at island restaurants. It's chart like. The standing joke is that we refer to that thing more often than anything else, and it's probably true!

[ssobol]

[RobLL]

[JamesTXSD]

[thataway]

One item has been left out of this conversation, and that surprises me because most of the posters live in the PNW==where Currents and tides are a huge part of the equation. Even today, if I was boating up there, I would carry a set of tide tables, and the current maps and yearly tables. Such as: "Current Atlas: Juan de Fuca Strait to Strait of Georgia" and a set of tide and current tables--either ones from a private publisher "(Waggoner or Ports and passes" or NOAA tides and currents or one of the many "Apps".)

Many chart plotters have these programs built in, but I found it handy to plot out how much current I was going to have with or against me. Of course with the sailboats, and speed usually in the 6 to 7 knot range it was critical...

Another point in navigating with the depth sounder--if you loose GPS, and have a good dead reckoning then the depths become key. For example in S. Calif. Redondo Canyon comes in right to the entrance of King Harbor--just follow the canyon if you loose the GPS--or before there was GPS...!

As for accuracy--we don't see as many predicted log races as there used to be, but there seems to be a comeback. I noted that Pensacola YC how has these regularly. With a predicted log race, the skipper only has a compass, tachometer and chart. Often there are several "waypoints"--and the skipper has to predict when he will arrive at each waypoint as well as the finish point. The only clock aboard is a chronometer which is held by an "observer" who takes the time at check points and when the skipper crosses the "finish line". The best skippers can be within seconds on a 100 mile race. (Even with currents)

There is a lot to "reading the water"--the way the waves change as you near Island, the currents, the way the kelp flows, the surface change to refract the waves as you near points... That comes mostly with experience.