Only just gone 09.30 and I’m fairly knackered. Been awake since 04.00 though, so there’s that. Anyway. I have been reading marine charts this morning. Real ones of fake places, for my Yachtmaster exams, and real ones of real places just for the sake of familiarity. I recently bought a set of West Wales, North Wales, Irish Sea and Ireland marine charts for a song from someone on a FB group. British mariners, civilian and military, are used to paper charts produced by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office. According to their website the UKHO is ‘… a world-leading centre for hydrography, specialising in marine geospatial data to support safe, secure and thriving oceans.’ Marvellous. Except…
Well, except for the fact that UKHO has announced they will stop producing paper charts for the Admiralty, Maritime and Coast Guard Agency, and all military and civilian mariners in 2026. UKHO reckons that by 2026 we all will have switched over to digital and only dinosaurs and a few Neanderthals will have a requirement for such old-fashioned nonsense as paper charts.
Maybe I should put back taking my Yachtmaster exams, because all I’ll have to do after 2026 is create a bunch of waypoints on a digital chartplotter and let the computing work out such things as tides and tidal flows.
However Imray, who also produce paper charts and who aren’t part of UKHO have already said they have no plans to abandon paper for digital. Hmm. This feels like I need to keep on working with paper charts for my exams. Oh. Bum.
The good thing about paper charts is that they don’t need batteries.
The idea is that you’d download your charts to more than one device (a chartplotter and your mobile phone or tablet) so you can use them offline. I’m sure the average commander of a Royal Navy nuclear submarine would feel warm and fluffy with operating in this way.