The UKHO intends to withdraw from paper chart production by 2026

[BlowingOldBoots]

https://www.admiralty.co.uk/sunsetting-paper-charts

This includes print on demand service, from the FAQs: -

Which paper products will be withdrawn?
ADMIRALTY Standard Nautical Charts, Thematic Charts, ARCS, Tracings, Small Craft Charts and Print on Demand will be removed from the market in a phased process, and we will reassess the content of our ECDIS service. The withdrawal of paper charts does not include paper publications, which we will continue to support.

Unfortunately no leisure plotters are ECDIS compliant and many have navigational information that is simply wrong, albeit on a small scale i.e. crowd sourced data (which can usually be switched off).

The blurb from the arses at The Admiralty is that they will develop replacement systems for the those effected. No doubt this would be relatively simple for an organisation that only has digital data that complies with the quality control standard for this data. That just leaves an ECDIS system that is low cost enough for leisure users to use and that also meets the quality control requirements for ECDIS i.e. layering, render and resolution protocols.

I recon we will end up with a subscription service, where a fee is paid to the Admiralty to use their data on a system. I mean, if BMW can offer heated seats as a subscription service, why not digital chart information.

I must admit, I hate updating my portfolio by hand. Antares surveys, cause no end of frustration of rocks an extra 6 cm high or low. But it is not just Antares updates. In 2020 some fishy organisation did a lot of survey work in the Haemorrhoids and guess what, the lumpy bits do move! I won't miss that monumental pain in the arse.

The question now, should I buy a new plotter or wait to see what comes out of this?

I am not qualified to use ECDIS systems, but do work with them, and they are remarkably clear, render very fast and display relevant data for navigation at all levels of zoom. They are nothing like any of the plotters that I have seen, which are distinctly amateurish by comparison. So a long way to go.

[Gardenshed]

Reality is that Navionics, Imray, Raymnarine and others will use the source data from the Admiralty upload it into their own platforms with their own enhancements/features. Hopefully there will continue to be paper printed charts available at a reasonable cost, but few people go to the bother of regularly updating these.
This year, I bought a Raymarine Axiom + 9 chartplotter and I took the Raymarine subscription for their charts. Magically, everything updated using my mobile phone hotspot and I have all their latest charts in the magic black box. As all my other Raymarine kit is on the same network the system checked the software and updated everything at the same time. Great when it works but I will have a Navionics subscription on my phone and iPad as a back up!
Savvy Navvy and others will come along and offer more integration with forecasting and tidal predictions.....but its still good to have paper charts, an almanac and pilot books as back up/cross reference. No system is prefect

[stevepick]

Its a sad day, paper charts don't need a battery, and take a soaking better than an i-pad will. I may sound like an old grumpus, but I spent my career designing microelectronics, so I am no technophobe. It maybe my background, but I am fairly aware how limited the failsafes and backups are on my yachts electrical system. I have also had a chartplotter screen blow on me one evening 10 miles out from Ardrossan. Once I had dismissed the 3 mobile phones on board for their inability to match each others GPS position, I sat down, started a paper plot and realised that the Stephensons had given me a perfectly easy way to make my way around the MoK using their advanced light based tech system from the 19th century. One of the best trips around I ever had.

The good news is that Imray have stated on their website their commitment to paper ( in the news section ). So support them, I am already in the process of updating my portfolios from UKHO to Imray ones

[Gardenshed]

in addition to my Navionics and Raymarine electronics, I'll continue to have paper charts, paper tide tables & pilot books on board
plus Hamish Haswell-Smiths "The Scottish Islands"
Electronics have the habit of letting you down at exactly the moment when you need them most

[Bodach na mara]

We are the lucky ones who not only have Charts but also know how to make use of their information. It's later generations who have my sympathies. Even Spephenson's lights need a database of positions, which a chart is.

I agree with the comments about updating charts. Once, when I was young and keen, I used to follow the Notices to Mariners in magazines and only once saw a notice relevant to any of my charts. It gave the position of a newly discovered rock close to the west shore of little Cumbrae. I duly plotted it only to find the position was actually above the HW line on the east shore. The following month there was an amended Notice giving the correct position, which at least was on the west shore, but still where I was unlikely to hit it, being between the tide lines.

[BlowingOldBoots]

Tom Cunliffe is aghast.

https://www.yachtsandyachting.co.uk/hom ... nQQrq5SLzU

He makes some good points about navigating on a small screen; a bigger plotter screen is required.

[Burst Boiler]

Once you work your way through the first third where Tom lets us all know how knowledgeable he is about the history of (redundant, out of date) navigation techniques which slightly undermines his actual point, he gets onto some relevant topics. But I don't agree that there's a tiny chance of all electronic things failing at once. A power loss on board means the boats systems fail, and then you cant charge your phone/ipad either, and these things gobble power when used as plotters. So after 12 hours say, you really have no backup. I'm not sure what might survive a lightening strike either. But I think UKHO is the wrong target - if leisure sailors and mobos did what Tom preaches and bought regularly updated charts, there would be plenty of business and they would not withdraw from a profitable enterprise. Maybe Tom should be campaigning for sailors to buy more paper charts as the way to keep them in production. Lets see if Imray gets a sales bump. My guess is people just don't bother with paper anymore (wrongly in my opinion), but having charts available that nobody buys doesn't really address the real issue either.

[BlowingOldBoots]

Goodpoints Burst Boiler. Cunliffe also makes the point about ECDIS systems on ships being a wholly different thing from what could be put on a yacht. I survey drilling rigs, mainly drill ships and semi submersible drilling units, in particular the drilling aspects. Part of my assessment includes Emergency Response assessment. I work with marine Surveyors who do the actual ship assessments. The ECDIS systems on a modern drill ship, is usually by a company called Kongsberg and their K-Bridge system. https://www.kongsberg.com/maritime/prod ... ay-system/, see link for this that are interested. Note that they still use NMEA0183 network standard.

There are upto 4 of these systems on a dynamically positioned vessel. However, to comply with IMO standard for ECDIS the back up systems are assessed through a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) process to identify and manage single point failures. In effect this means that the ECDIS system is doubled up for a no paper chart strategy. They are powered from independent UPS systems and from different switch boards which are powered from independent power sources (different engine generator sets on a drill ship) i.e. each ECDIS unit is stand alone, even though they are all integrated. The bottom line, is that leisure sailors are just not going to get that on a yacht. In addition, integration with other systems, must not interfere with the quality requirements of ECDIS and if it does, the system must default back to standalone. If the vector charts mess up, they have to have a RASTER chart back up in the software. Now, if I think about Raymarine integration and recent threads on Navionics,at YBW, these systems can get corrupted, requiring resets, Navionics drops out and switches off. So, leisure plotters are a long way from complying with IMO regulations for ECDIS systems, where paper charts are removed from a boats navigation capability.

I would bet my last dollar that the majority of leisure sailors only navigate with their plotter and don't even look at a chart. There are now yachts that dont have chart tables. At the end of the day, like everything else, it comes down to risk tolerance and probability and for the majority plotters will work with a very low probability of failure. Then there are other leisure sailors who may wander much further than the next marina; they don't have a solution right now that could be considered reliable, for the reasons you state. However, a mini solar panel and a tablet, could be a backup. ECDIS without GPS, defaults to DR, but it needs inputs from compasses and logs, and on a ship, they too have redundancy and operate from UPS and different power supplies, and tend to be gyro compasses. The Vikings and Saint Columba managed to navigate, so maybe we should not get too worked up about it. I think a digital solution will be found, if there is a will and profit to be made.

Charter yacht and sailing schools will have to have charts until such times as a leisure yacht plotter and system meets a standard that is acceptable to all. Charts will be by Imray.

https://www.kongsberg.com/maritime/prod ... ay-system/

Interesting times.

[Burst Boiler]

What happened to e-loran as an independent alternative to GPS? I heard they had gone as far as practical trials years ago, then nothing.

[BlowingOldBoots]

An incident last year where a vessel hits an oil platform that was not on ECDIS but was on paper charts.

https://rin.org.uk
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acc ... IR2218.pdf

[Gardenshed]

An incident last year where a vessel hits an oil platform that was not on ECDIS but was on paper charts.

https://rin.org.uk
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acc ... IR2218.pdf

they had a paper chart with the rig marked on it and were using the chart to manually plot their position
they had a working radar
They saw the rig 10 minutes before they hit it

...... even without it marked on the ECDIS, there were many many opportunities to avoid hitting quite a large structure (73 feet above the water, the platform was 162 feet long and 81 feet wide and had three decks and a heliport. SP-83A was painted orange and equipped with eight flashing white lights with 2-mile visibility 53 feet above the water, and a fog signal with a 2-mile range.)

from the summary:
“navigators should always cross check ECDIS information with the other sources," and, if not used properly, “ECDIS may contribute to accidents rather than preventing them.” The inability to recognize the fallibility of technology, such as an ECDIS, can result in operator overreliance and overconfidence that degrades sound navigation practices and negatively affects situational awareness.

wise words we can all learn from

[stevepick]

So a small silver lining in my opinion. I recently purchased the Kintyre to Ardnamurchan and Clyde Folios from Imray. So the silver lining is that the quality is excellent. The paper heavy weight, the printing fine and clear, the charts are properly water resistant. Really impressed, the most recent UKHO folios really don't stand up to a comparison.

[Gardenshed]

So a small silver lining in my opinion. I recently purchased the Kintyre to Ardnamurchan and Clyde Folios from Imray. So the silver lining is that the quality is excellent. The paper heavy weight, the printing fine and clear, the charts are properly water resistant. Really impressed, the most recent UKHO folios really don't stand up to a comparison.

good to know, thanks

[mm5aho]

The Imray series of leisure folios is being extended to cover the same areas as the CCC Sailing Directions, roughly in order of popularity of the SDs.
At a recent meeting that included UKHO people, I learned that not only the cessation of the paper charts, but that a whole new grid system for the new "charts" is to be devised. So that will mean that the electronic versions of the new "charts" will have different coverage to the existing numbering system that largely "grew like topsy".

[stevepick]

Thanks Geoff. Good to know about the Imray coverage. Interesting about the complete revision of the UKHO system. Will all the chartplotter companies update their cards? Its going to take a while for this to permeate through the system. Were any issues or risks associated with the loss of paper and movement to an unsupported system ( ECDIS for yachts ) discussed ?