Latest Boating Safety Topic

[KWKloeber]

Safety Newsletters (most recent first)

[KWKloeber]

Safety Newsletters (most recent first)


NOAA Charts Coming to an end
https://groups.io/g/Catalina30/message/104626


Coast Guard Smart Phone App
https://groups.io/g/Catalina30/message/102513

Vessel Meeting and Overtaking Situations
https://groups.io/g/Catalina30/message/102400

[Steve_in_lex]

Thanks for the information; I just wrote NOAA with my comment, which is to keep the hard copy.  Question, though: in the event that NOAA discontinues hard copy charts, is it likely that they'll be offered through private printers like Maptech?  (FWIW, I don't use Maptech chart books without a NOAA chart nearby, because the scale is not as useful.)

[Steve_in_lex]

Answering my earlier question, here's an excerpt of NOAH's reply to my comment: 

"The sunset effort will wind down and ultimately stop production of all traditional NOAA paper nautical charts by January 2025, but an alternative paper chart product is being developed that will be even more useful and up-to-date than existing, traditional paper nautical charts. The NOAA Custom Chart web application can create raster chart images that may then be printed to create ENC-based paper charts. A prototype of the web application is at https://devgis.charttools.noaa.gov/pod. Many improvements are planned for the prototype, but we are still interested in hearing suggestions for other enhancements."

...and when I click on that link, the prototype looks like it allows one to zoom in on the area you want to print and print it on your own printer, using various paper sizes.  So that doesn't work for most uses, but I'm sure there will be a commercially available source of good, hard copy charts.

[Ron Hill]

Guys : My Grandson works for the USCG in the "Mapping Division" and thought I'd ask him what was going on with the NOAA charts.  Here is his reply  :


Grandpa,

Last summer my old office at NOAA announced no more production of paper charts (raster). But raster charts started dying out out 3 or 4 years ago when NOAA announced that all charting changes would be electronic nautical chart (ENC) first. Meaning raster started taking a back seat to the ENC and the resources slowly moved more toward ENC. The final nail in the coffin was the 2018-2018 government shutdown that cause paper charts to be abandoned in terms of updates because of bare bones resources. The shutdown caused a backlog of nautical charting changes where NOAA could no longer maintain two intensive charting products. As a result NOAA started only updating local notice to mariners and critical discrepancies.

So that is how NOAA came to sun setting their paper charts. In the next 5 years they plan to end the charts in phases. These phases start this spring when they stop production on Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and all US Territories (these are the least active in terms of nautical users and changes.

I switched jobs in February of 2019 to the Coast Guard Office of Navigation Systems as their nautical charting advisor and policy project manager. The whole Coast Guard and small parts of the Army are the only military services still using paper for navigational purposes, but only as navigational backups and planning. So the CG and Army are in panic mode to find solutions for their backups... NOAA claims that they can print raster charts from the ENCs which they can but this method is expensive to develop and not reliable yet. DLA plans to use these raster ENCs as the alternative to current raster charts but with expiration dates...  Needless say NOAA, USCG, DLA, and NGA are all trying to figure things out...

- Chris Hill


On Jan 6, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Ron <ronphylhill@comcast.net> wrote:

Chris : I've heard that NOAA charts are no longer being printed in the future??  Can you shed any light on what is happening?   Grandpa Hill