Aleria's Adventures

NOAA has undertaken a comprehensive plan to evolve their chart products. The following statements are from NOAA announcements recently released: "The NOAA Office of Coast Survey has released a draft National Charting Plan. The plan describes the current set of NOAA nautical chart products and their distribution, as well as some of the steps Coast Survey is taking to improve NOAA charts, including changes to chart formats, scales, data compilation, and symbology. The purpose of the plan is to solicit feedback from nautical chart users regarding proposed changes to NOAA's paper and electronic chart products. Coast Survey invites written comments on this plan that is available from https://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/​staff/​news/​2017/​nationalchartingplan.html ."

Learning advanced navigation for the USCG captains' license - is this obsolete? Periodically, and seemingly with increasing frequency, a cruiser somewhere posts a rant about how technology has reached the stage where paper charts and traditional navigation have been rendered obsolete. Some of these cruisers are very experienced (and I would have thought they'd know better). I feel the need to put forth my proposition for why reliance on one technology that has its flaws is a really undesirable position to be in and has potentially serious consequences for the safety of the crew. It also undermines good seamanship practices.