stay safe- update your charts and apps

A friend of mine recently ran aground and did some serious damage to his boat (thankfully nobody was injured) due to allegedly inaccurate charts. However, when we dug into it, turns out my friend had not updated his navigation charts or the navigation app and this would have provided him with updated chart data that reflected the shallow area. Personally I use Navionics app on my phone and I have auto updates set to on for the app through my phone settings. But I also am sure to update the charts within the app on a regular basis (every couple of weeks at the most). This way I have my bases covered on both fronts. It seems that updating your navigation tools is super important but doesn't get a lot of attention. Please remind your fellow boaters to update not only their charts but also their navigational apps, whichever app they choose to use.

Plenty of charts are inaccurate, even the most up to date version.

A place I regularly go through, 14nm from a capital city shipping port in Australia is shown as land on the latest chart, yet we go through there with as much as 14 ft under our 7 ft draught.

It's kind of expensive & a pain in the butt to keep our Garmin chartplotters updated with the most current charts but much easier to update the charts on the Ipad we keep onboard (we use the SeaIQ charting program). For general navigation, we just keep an eye on the plotter but when we're entering unfamiliar waters, one of us pilots the boat keeping an eye on the Garmin with the stale charts & the other double-checks our intended course with the Ipad & current charts.

Not an issue here in Maine. The only changes are very infrequent moves of marks. The rocks are where they always have been.

Charts are only about a quarter to a third the equation.... beyond that you better learn to read water and understand bottom conditions....plus your boat and a whole bunch else besides just reading a chart.

Charts are definitely not perfect. I've seen some where the buoy marks just don't line up to where the buoys actually are (even on the most recent chart).

Stuff like that is why I'm not only a little uptight about keeping charts updated, but any time I'm in unfamiliar waters, I like having 2 different types of charts on hand at the helm. If I hit a point where they're telling me 2 different things and the view outside doesn't make it obvious which is correct, it's time to slow down and carefully assess what's going on around me.

psneeld said:

Charts are only about a quarter to a third the equation.... beyond that you better learn to read water and understand bottom conditions....plus your boat and a whole bunch else besides just reading a chart.

Click to expand...

Yes! Adding to psn's post, I'd say denial enters into reasons as to why boaters run aground all too frequently.