
NOAA Paves the Way in Modern Chart Making
Making and updating nautical charts is a continuous process that involves many people from different disciplines and organizations.

Making and updating nautical charts is a continuous process that involves many people from different disciplines and organizations.

Successful navigation is really just answering three simple questions: Where am I? Where am I going? How do I get there from here? Even when

In December 2013, I wrote stories about the “magenta line” on our nautical charts depicting the Intracoastal Waterway, and now lawyers want me to answer
Did you know that some areas of the U.S. coastal chart you’re using may only show land and bottom features accurate in position to +/- 1,600 feet, and you shouldn’t be confident about the depth soundings either?

Personally I have no problem going electronic-only when transiting familiar waters or inland waterways. But I love maps and charts. In fact as I typed those six preceding words, I looked up lovingly at the map of the Caribbean basin above my desk.
Yup, you’re going to be able to easily collect soundings as you cruise, if you want, you can watch the resulting high def sonar chart materialize in your wake.

With the help of Google, Torqueedo electric power, solar panels, and a specially designed multihull boat, the Baykeeper project is hard at work photographing some 500 miles of coastline around the San Francisco Bay area.

An estimated 70 percent of the trash sinks, and much of it is tiny bits of non-biodegradable plastic floating out of sight just below the surface creating what NASA calls the ‘Garbage Islands.’

NOAA’s quest to better understand the world’s seafloor continues, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has committed two of its ships to collect and update chart data in the Arctic.
For the past three years we’ve used electronic charting, combined with GPS, for navigation. For instance, on a recent overnight trip from New York Harbor

We can spend years planning for a bucket-list trip and then life gets in the way. Go now.

Splashing later this year.

Karly and Evan Nietzel—aka YouTube’s @Navigating Nietzels—tailored their careers for remote work after buying a trawler, moving onboard and completing the Great Loop. Along with their pup, Ripley, they’re just getting started.

This aluminum vessel’s throwback design belies its modern systems, all installed for a Great Loop cruise.

The three-stateroom, semidisplacement model has a range of power options and a low air draft.

A solar-power system on our classic trawler lets us spend time moored or anchored with more than enough juice to meet our energy needs.

America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association has been helping boaters complete the ultimate voyage for a quarter century.

The steel-hull Nightfall, designed by William Garden, connects generations of this family through a love of cruising.

Larry Graf, the founder, designer and lead engineer of Aspen Power Catamarans, talks about Aspen’s proa hull designs and adventure cruising on his own creations from the Arctic to the Sea of Cortez.

With her vertical bow, reverse raked windshield and indoor-outdoor living space, the Galeon 430 EXP defies categorization.