In an area like the Long Island Sound, how often should a chartkit be updated?
Are 5 or 8 year old charts useless? I'm getting a very wide variant of opinions
on this one.

Capt RB

I've got some old charts of the City Island area from the 1930's. If I get
time, I'll send you a jpeg.



"Bobsprit" wrote in message
...
In an area like the Long Island Sound, how often should a chartkit be
updated?
Are 5 or 8 year old charts useless? I'm getting a very wide variant of
opinions
on this one.

Capt RB

On 15 Jul 2003 14:08:01 GMT, (Bobsprit) wrote:

In an area like the Long Island Sound, how often should a chartkit be updated?
Are 5 or 8 year old charts useless? I'm getting a very wide variant of opinions
on this one.

Capt RB

Regardless the area sailed, all charts need to be updated regularly -
as much as weekly. Aids to navigation can be added, changed or
moved. For US charts, check the Notices to Mariners update site.
(http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/updates/index.htm)

It only covers changes since January 2000.

Jack Dale

In an area like the Long Island Sound, how often should a chartkit be
updated?
Are 5 or 8 year old charts useless? I'm getting a very wide variant of
opinions
on this one.

Its a function of how frequently aids to nav are changed. Follow the notice to
mariners and see how often changes hit your area. I had a chart for the Great
South Bay that was 20 years old and it was fine, except all the buoys had their
numbers changed, even though they were still in the same place. It made
picking my way through a little tough but not impossible.

On 15 Jul 2003, (Bobsprit) wrote:

In an area like the Long Island Sound,
how often should a chartkit be updated?
Are 5 or 8 year old charts useless?

This is a facially riduclous yet also basically self-answering
question. Ask (and answer for) yourself:

- Do you already know the waters in question
without regard to the charts in question (i.e., have
the proverbial "local knowledge" Thing)?

- Do you have well-founded reason to believe that
the underwater rocks shown on the "old" charts have
moved or good reason to believe that there are probably
not other underwater obstructions you would not other-
wise see that were not present when those charts were
published?

- Do you have well-founded reason to believe that,
whether or not perhaps renumbered or changed in some
other apparent manner (e.g., by replacing a "can" with a
"bell" etc.), the channel markers and other navigation
aids shown on the "old" charts have not been altered
signficantly since those charts were published?

- More generally yet also more basically, to what
extent is your primary purpose in looking at any chart
to obtain verification of what is a more or less (with,
presumably, more emphasis on "more" and less on "less")
accurate current description of what is on and under
the water?

I'm getting a very wide variant of opinions
on this one.

In an "around the cans" race on L.I. Sound a week or so ago, one of
the boats (as it happens, a C&C notably larger and, undoubtedly,
notably faster than yours) -- captained by someone with "local
knowledge" -- came within what appeared to be no more than ten feet
from the Eastern side of Execution Rocks, without adverse incident
(and, it is a fair guess, without the boats occupants having looked at
a chart, new or old). A few days later, I saw another boat, a motor
cruiser I later learned was equipped with lots of current charts and
also a lovely, big-screen, color-chartplotter (with new C-MAP, NT+
chip for the area), being towed after it hit rocks nearby but further
away from the island than the C&C to which I refer.