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I still remember going over the charts when I made my first trip around
Newfoundland and seeing that the charts were annotated with, "as
surveyed by James Cook, 1775". There was no indication of any updates.
The waters were deep enough that we slept well at night, but the Mate
told us of meeting with an unmarked sea mount on one arctic trip.
Apparently shoring up a steel hull with wood and canvas still does the
trick.

The work that Cook accomplished is quite amazing especially considering
the equipment of the day.  I just realized that I used to know the
markings of the lead line, but have forgotten them completely. Was seven
fathoms red bunting?

  I wonder how many of the world's charts are still quite out of date. I
read once of a volunteer program in the UK where mariners submit the
soundings from their own GPS linked sounders, and the chart makers use
that data to help improve the systems. Is that really happening or was
it just a plan?

Oh, a little note on situational awareness.  In the early eighty's, some
genius in our nation's capital decided that nautical charts should be
metric and for a while you could have charts with soundings in meters
and feet/fathoms, as they were not replaced all at one time. We never
had any groundings, but we certainly had a few unkind words to say about
our chart makers as we jumped back and forth from metric to nautical
soundings.  I used to do the chart updates from the Notice to Mariner's
and burn all the old charts when they were finally replaced.  I wish I
had kept them all. I could have quite a collection, and I still love
paper charts!



Keep a good watch.

Bruce Hamilton



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