Charts, Paper vs Electronic

I ran across this post today (03/30/2020) on FaceBook:

Cell Phone Skipper. With so many good navigation apps its simple to navigate using a smartphone or tablet, but those devices can stop working at inopportune times. A good skipper should have paper charts onboard and know how to use them. Learn the basics and stay safe on the water with this Free e-Book: https://coastalnavigationpro.com/freebie/

My answer to that suggestion is as follows:

It is important to note that the world is changing and moving away from everything paper. In the case of paper charts, the governments of the world are stopping printing of paper charts. They are no longer mandatory to have on board, (charts are required, they just don’t have to be paper). We have some paper charts on board but not to the scale that would be required (or even desired) for the locations we might anchor in.

What we do have is a variety of ways to figure out where we are:

GPS receivers:

  • Chart plotter
  • VHF radio
  • VHF handheld radio
  • SSB radio
  • Iridium GO! 
  • iPhone (3 of them)
  • iPad (2 of them)
  • Hand held GPS
  • EPIRB

Map software systems on board:

  • Chart Plotter (two 12” chart plotters, both get the GPS signal, one has the charts in it and is set as the “master”.
  • MacBookPro with OpenCPN
  • Windows 10 laptop with OpenCPN
  • iPads (2)
  • iPhones (2)

As a point of reference, on my boat there are three separate GPS antenna’s not counting the Iridium external antenna, and if the external antenna fails, I can unplug and the local antenna works.

I keep guide books for places to go where I sail, for example I am in the Sea of Cortes, and we have at least three guide books for harbors and ports and places of interest with descriptions of the various anchorages. All of the books include LAT/LON information. We have a couple of large scale maps for this area as well.
I have the electronic charts on the Chart plotter and OpenCPN on two laptops, one MacBookPro and the other a Windows 10 device. 

On top of all this, I keep aware of where I am, reviewing the electronic charts for where I am going, and where I am at.

So, What if?

  1. What if the GPS system is turned off, I will park the boat in a suitable anchorage near where we are and wait for it to come back on. I am in no particular hurry, we don’t sail when we expect storms (much more of a concern to me than a loss of GPS signal), or high winds. The likelihood that even in time of war the system will remain off for an extended period of time is pretty low. The impact to all forms of shipping and air traffic and basically all forms of transportation are just too high.
  2. What if one of the GPS systems fails, like the chart plotter? See one of the redundant systems
  3. What if we take a lightening strike and lose all electronics? I have some large scale maps and books, and since I am aware of where I am most of the time, I will go anchor somewhere nearby and figure out how to find someone that was not affected by the strike. There are lots of other boaters around, we have been down here for 5 months, and have only had about two nights at anchor by ourselves, no matter how far from cities, even coming down the west coast of Baja, hundreds of miles from anything.
      1. What about the “GREAT” Paper charts? Well, we made the trip from Corpus Christ, Tx to Tampa, Florida in 2013 on the ICW. We struggled to find paper charts, as I really wanted to have them on board. Very quickly we found the best paper “charts” for this stretch of the ICW were the PLACEMATS in the various restaurants along the ICW, and they matched almost perfectly the electronic charts that were available.

I am not a fan of paper charts, they don’t get updates, and even if that is my fault, where am I supposed to get the updates? Oh yeah, electronic. So, we have old charts, we have manual updates, and I have to figure out where I am on a particular chart. Which of course won’t be as high of resolution as would be available on even the most basic of a chart program/chart plotter, because I am not going to carry a complete library of charts for everywhere I am going to go, For example, since October 31, we have sailed approximately 1,000 miles straight line distance or closer to 2,000 miles with all the side trips and back and forth. The high resolution fine scale charts that we would have needed would have been very difficult to keep track of while on a sailboat. I would much rather have easy to use, always available electronic charts that show where I am at a glance. With the resolution and scale appropiate to what I am looking at, and easily adjustable as I change the scale on my chart plotter/radar/AIS screen.

In the case of the Great Loop, where virtually the entire time you are on the water, you could see both banks, and you have a compass. You should be able to figure out where you are. 

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