Rosalie B. wrote:

I don't know where you are or what kind of boating you intend to do.
But here are some general thoughts.

I haven't seen the necessity to do much updating of any paper charts
we have. I don't actually purchase the large paper charts very often,
although the PO of our boat had a large number of them for the
Chesapeake.

Paper charts are pretty easy to update - you can just write on them.
Getting the updates are more of a problem because the Notice to
Mariners are not organized (IMHO) in a way to make this easy to do.
Outside of the US, the charts are not updated very much. Some charts
may have been done in 1899, and have not been updated since. Or they
may have big blank areas on them with no depths indicated.

You're bundling two different "updatings" together, here.
Corrections from LNM (or yearly summaries) generally involve more
"immediate" corrections/updates for known changes to lights, buoys,
wrecks, shoals, rocks, etc..
When enough changes have occurred or newer surveys show major changes
you will get a "new edition" of a chart.
The fact that basic data on a chart may date to "1899", does not
necessarily mean that the information on the entire chart has not been
updated from/since that date.
Personally, the only time I've ever had a problem following the
corrections from LNM is when I've left a chart uncorrected for long
periods, and yes, charts outside the US are frequently updated/corrected.


Sometimes people copy each other's charts or trade charts. If I have
a lot of charts of the west coast of Mexico, and I go through the
Panama Canal into the Caribbean where I meet someone who is going the
other way, we may trade - I give them my Mexican charts and they give
me their Caribbean charts. I hear about this a lot, and I see people
offering charts, but I don't know how often it happens in real life or
how helpful these charts would be.

Not a practice I'd recommend, since you are relying on the other guy to
have maintained his charts up to date.



I also have computer charts for these areas, which I do not print out,
but use with a GPS in the cockpit. They show me where I am, and have
the advantage that even if the buoy's are renumbered, I can still see
where I am. If buoy #36 is next to my boat, but the chart says it is
buoy #24, that's OK - I still know where I am.

Yup...... about to run over a wreck/rock/etc., that the corrections
would have shown, causing the relocation and re-numbering of the buoys.