Harlen David wrote:

I am puzzled about navigational charts. I understand we need to have
them and know how to use them but they seem very expensive and we seem
to need quite a number of them, then keep them updated. I found some
free digital Navigational charts at the NOAA web site that need to be
viewed with a software program but there seemed to be no way to print
them out. Any help would be appreciated.

Harlen

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.

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.

Most of the time I get chartbooks aka chart kits, which are also
expensive, but less so than purchasing all the individual charts.
They come in large, but more handle-able formats, and usually are
plasticized so that getting wet isn't as much of a problem. I have
chart kits for the Chesapeake (2 or 3), the ICW from Norfolk to the
St. Mary's River in GA (2), the east coast of FL, the FL Keys, and
three or 4 for the Bahamas.

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.

Some people use chart plotters, but I have no experience with that - I
just went directly to computer charts.

People also buy cruising guides for the areas that they intend to
visit which supplement the charts by indicated areas that have shoaled
and also marinas and anchorages, tell the history of the area, etc.

HTH

grandma Rosalie