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Have Your Say - Canadian Hydrographic Service

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Gary Jacek said:
I suspect they wish to cease publication of water soluble charts.
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Marine charts are quite durable, even if they get wet. High quality, heavy paper stock. And, charts can be treated with waterproofing solutions like MapSeal, though that makes pencil notation almost impossible.
Is CHS planning to offer all their charts on waterproof media?

Gary Jacek said:
Wouldn’t it be great if they provided freely downloadable charts in PDF format, as is done by New Zealand for many, many years.
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That would be fine, but not as a substitute for paper charts - which seems to be the direction that CHS is following.
NZ still produces and sells paper charts:
https://www.linz.govt.nz/sea/charts

A full-size chart is much more useful for trip planning than a set of letter/legal pages, IMO.
Starting with a .pdf.........
And then we could print those charts?? How?? Inkjet printer? Or use a commercial printing service to get more waterproof ink with laser colour prints- still on low quality paper stock?
And then laminate each chart section? Because a home-printed (or Staples-printed) chart won't last long in most chart cases on a kayak deck.
Most of those options will be more expensive and less convenient that the charts we can still buy. I've experimented with all of those options.
To see how a 'free' system works, try the US charts which are available for download - I did that a few years ago when planning an Alaska trip...it was a mess. I ended up buying a commercial 'cruising' chart instead. I have also used cheaper commercially-printed US charts when I had a sailboat. The quality was far from 'the real thing'.
 
I would love to be able to download vector charts for specific areas I intend to paddle. Large format, small-scale, charts are useful for planning and general overview, but I don't use them as much on a trip other than planning while ashore. I'd rather have several smaller, laminated charts to use as on deck navigation.
As someone who is comfortable with vector graphic work, I'd love to have the raw data to work from. I could make some really tricked out maps with all the little notations I like to add already there. Little things like having the compass rose closer to where I'll be navigating would be a decent quality of life improvement.

The reference books going digital is more annoying to me. I find a physical copy much easier to lookup. But again, I could probably make do without.

I doubt that whatever system they adopt will be perfect. Hopefully it allows the private sector to take over printing if there's demand.
 
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