This is a PDF Chart:
I can not take that file to Fed Ex and print it on their plotter, or send it to a blueprint printer myself and use it to satisfy carriage requirements. I also cannot carry it on an Ipad and call it my chart.
This is a POD chart, it will satisfy carriage requirements:
It’s essentially the same file, but printed by an approved distributer. It will be stamped or printed with a certificate of authenticity. This is what the certificate of authenticity looks like on POD charts from Ocean Graphix vs my local chart shop:
This is a NOAA Custom chart, a canceled chart with OG.
It should not only not have a certificate of authenticity, but have the Automated Chart Generation memo I put higher in the thread.
The website does say:
At the discretion of USCG inspectors, this chart may meet carriage requirements.
Which I think is shady, because I think this is relying on the CG inspectors to not know what they are looking at, which happens. The chart covers the same area at the same scale, but the scale of the underlying ENCs have changed and been redivided under NOAA’s new system. The chart they are selling is 1:20,000, because that’s what the old chart was, but now the most of ENCs are 1:10,000 so you are not actually using the best available scale. Things get wonky when you don’t set the scale right because of SCAMIN values programed into the ENCs, made with ECDIS use in mind. If any of this custom chart goes outside the cells that are 1:10,000, they will show the next best scale which is 1:40,000 or 1:80,000 which should trigger an overscale warning at 1:20,000 if it were viewed on an ECDIS. The Custom chart generator really needs to indicate ENC boundaries, it’s the biggest liability I see.
You can no longer look up corrections for 11312, you’d have to go to this part of the country on the weekly update tool and manually look for any corrections in the area depicted on the chart. This gets a little weird when you have to consider SCAMIN, because as you zoom in on an ENC more and more detail becomes visible. The old way, when the cartographers said there is a change to this buoy which is on this chart, the correction was just pushed to the appropriate charts. Now you have to do math to figure out if the buoy should be at the scale you printed.
I’m going to flat out say Ocean Graphix is being shady trying to stay in busines while their bread and butter of paper charts turns to dust before them. They’re relying on people who don’t know better to say “Well, I had 18434, let’s see if I can get a new one” and then buy 18434OG because that’s what shows up. They charge $30 for these like a real chart, when you can generate your own custom chart for the area and scale you want, send it to a blueprint printing service and get color copies at like $8 a piece, and they will be just as good to cover carriage requirements, which is not at all. The USCG really needs to make a policy statement about these charts, but I think is up in the air during this period of transition.
