Author: Bruce Morehouse (---.direcpc.com)
Date: 03-17-06 07:43
I agree that the big charts are, well, big and a bother, particularly in wind. And yup, the $24 dollars is considerably more than the 10cents of ink for print your own!
The chart I bought at mdnautical.com is absolutely to scale, and , for someone who loves to pour over maps, beautiful and very legible. I keep telling myself it justifies the expense. At the 1:20,000 scale I can see the difference between a coral head and a wreck, fringing mangrove and a coral rubble (or would be able to if I bring my glasses with me...). It also arrived just three days after I ordered it in the night-well packaged, via UPS. [the same alacrity is lacking for the topo map from omnimaps.com]. I've seen plasticized charts that are out of date and not to scale and whose printing quality is dubious. This chart emphatically has none of those drawbacks.
As for navigation, I use potatoes. I just keep chunking them over the bow, and when they stop splashing I know I'm close to shore. This method works even in the dark the fog, and the totally unlikely event of the electronics on the boat having gone further south than you. Really, it is an almost fool proof "low-tech go-tech" method. [The spuds tend to go by quickly in the tropics, so the consumption of mashed potatoes and au grautin dishes is encouraged -- yams and sweet pototatoes work too and add variety to the meals]
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