On our recent Memorial day trip my wife and I had the joy of sailing back from Annapolis MD to our home port on the Sassafrass river...the conditions on Monday were less then ideal with 14-18 knot winds and sustained gusts to 28knots...not a bad day for excitable sailing...however the day was also full of beautiful spring squal lines that brought visibility and joyfullness to a barable low distance....it took us approx 9 hours to make the trip back under motor. We do not have a chart plotter, radar or at that time a gps...so we followed the cannel markers up the bay to our marker entrance.....all well and good following from the low 20s up into the 50s red and green. I must say that this is still a fairly new harbor/ river for us and being favored by the weather Gods it seams we allways come home under less than ideal conditions.....actually the last 3 times we have been out our visbility has been lets say....POOR. My chart book says that marker 54 is the turning point with compus bearing of 105NE and in 2.2 NM we should be in the bossum of a safe deep river. However the last 2 times I have sailed in using numbered bouys and compus bearing only...or mainly....due to weather......I have missed the entrance. On the last return trip Memorial day.....I purposly checked the bouy numbers and found that the entrance on our turn is now numbered at # 50 and no longer 54....What happened to the other 3 sets of markers??... Our chart is not THAT old...2001....may dock mates say that due to the hard winters the coast guard has been busy renumbering and relocating markers. Question for the group....how often do you check the Coast Guard notice to Mariners???...or update your charts??...and how far back should I go to find these missing numbers and what else have I missed?? Ive just looked for a new chart book and it turns out I have the latest version in print......What to do?? Thanks Rob
Chart updates
- Thread starter Leviosa
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Use the Notice to Mariners
You can have it mailed to you weekly, but it's tough to scrutinize. Those changes that you site could olnly be 2 weeks old. Diligence with the Notice is the only real way to stay updated. Word of mouth is risky. On a clear cday when you head out, check the numbers against your charts and make notations somewhere on the charts about the changed numbers.
You can have it mailed to you weekly, but it's tough to scrutinize. Those changes that you site could olnly be 2 weeks old. Diligence with the Notice is the only real way to stay updated. Word of mouth is risky. On a clear cday when you head out, check the numbers against your charts and make notations somewhere on the charts about the changed numbers.
In early May, I sailed my newly acquired Hunter 28.5 from Havre de Grace down the Bay (passing the Sassafras River)to Herrington Harbour North in Deale,Md. Never having made this trip before, I bought two whole new sets of charts. I also picked off a large number of GPS waypoints and plugged them into my GPS prior to the trip. Once we cleared the longish channel out of Havre de Grace, our plan was to sail south just a bit west of the deep water channel in order to keep out of the way of large commercial shipping. We soon realized that most of the buoys and navaids that were on the charts were not where "they were supposed to be" on the water, or in some cases, any place at all. The GPS saved the day as I had plugged in a number of waypoints that were either light houses or large towers on land. The lesson: Latitude and longitude don't change, but navaids do. I presume that some of the missing markers were casualties of Hurricane Isabel last fall. I've come to trust the GPS much for than the charts. Having said all this, I read the Local Notice to Mariners every week (now available online, too). Some of the missing or damaged markers were noted in the NOTAMs, but most were not. I guess the old advice about not relying on any one source of navigational info is really pretty good advice.
Notice to Mariners, II
The Notice to Mariners is no longer available by hard copy mail. The USCG stopped mailing them out as of April 1. They will put you on listserve reminder if you request it and let you know when the latest version is available in PDF format online.
The Notice to Mariners is no longer available by hard copy mail. The USCG stopped mailing them out as of April 1. They will put you on listserve reminder if you request it and let you know when the latest version is available in PDF format online.
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