I'm planning a cruise to the same area (southern Newfoundland) so I
appreciate the intelligence. I would use the private charts you trust
to enter the general shoreline as a route you can call up on one of
the chartplotter units. A good winter project. It will give you a
visible constant offset from the charted line that you can apply to
courses and navigational dangers. In some areas you might want to
simply enter a line to remain offshore from. The route names could be
used to indicate which method applies.

If you are a Garmin Bluecharts user, you could save this work in a gdb
file to share with others (like me It doesn't sound like you are
using Bluecharts but, if so or something else that can load gdb or gpx
files, contact me privately. I have the means to load and scan charts
into AutoCad so that lines can be traced and their properties printed
out in text files which would give you lat long points to enter. Gpx
files are in ASCII format so, given some time, I could write a program
to process the text output from AutoCad into gpx files that could be
read directly by a number of GPS plotting programs. I used to do a
lot of this text file string manipulation. There may be simpler and
more direct approaches but this is just what occurs to me off the top
of my head. I might have plenty of time this winter to work on
something like this and it would be well worth my while as a way to
become more familiar with the area and the charts.

BTW if I had a functioning Loran on my boat, I would keep it as a back
up considering the things that could shutdown GPS although I wouldn't
go out and buy one for that purpose. I also used Loran in my airplane
because it worked well enough that I couldn't justify the cost of a
GPS. Aircraft navigation, VFR at least, is a lot less precise than
marine navigation however. When you get within 3 about miles, you
switch to eyeballs.

--
Roger Long

Roger Long wrote:
... I would use the private charts you trust to enter the general
shoreline as a route ...

Not sure I know which charts you reference. I have available the CHO paper
charts (latest, corrected) and the NDI DVD (latest, corrected) for the area
in question (most of the southwest and south coast of NF). I have not
encountered private charts for this region. BTW the NDI electronic charts
include free updates for one year from the date of purchase. Pretty good
service, and they automatically send the new DVD to the address one uses
when registering the charts. All in all, very good service. I don't know
if this service is available elsewhere; the Bermuda electronic charts I
purchased in 2008 did NOT include updates.

BTW if I had a functioning Loran on my boat, I would keep it as a back up
... When you get within 3 about miles, you switch to eyeballs ...

The Sitex I mentioned in the original post dates from 1982. It has never
failed to operate correctly and I carried it aboard through last summer. I
compensate the unit based on GPS, but I have not lately had to rely on it
for position information. I removed it only to free up a very small amount
of space that might hold a few books (and also because the LORAN whip is in
the way when adjusting the steering vane) Based on what I have heard about
the NF south coast, the device may go back aboard.

--
Good luck and good sailing.
s/v Kerry Deare of Barnegat
http://home.comcast.net/~kerrydeare

On Nov 28, 2:22*pm, "Armond Perretta"
wrote:

Not sure I know which charts you reference. *

I misread your post. I looked back later and realized that the
private charts you were referring to are only for the Bahamas.

I think it might be possible with Google Earth as far as getting an
idea about any systematic chart skew or offset such as you might be
able to correct for with the Loran. However, it's also possible that
Google skews or shifts around their image tiles so that they
correspond to the official charts. When I do unlock the Newfoundland
region, I'm going to check the locations of lighthouses and other
major features between my Bluecharts and GE because it's fairly quick
and easy to do.

I think it's far more likely though that the whole region is just
poorly charted and some individual features are misplaced. Nothing to
do then but keep a sharp lookout and sail conservatively.

--
Roger Long