What are the methods for updating charts on board?

What are the methods for updating charts on board?

The amendment and updating of nautical charts is an ongoing process. Once issued, navigational features, aids or other relevant information must be issued continuously to provide the latest information for ships sailing in these areas.

Maritime Notices to Mariners (also known as "weekly notices") are used to amend and update nautical charts and are provided to ships in electronic or paper form.

The various methods for updating and maintaining the chart system on board include:

These notices are issued weekly by the Maritime Department and include chart amendments, as well as other publicationssuch as the Maritime Department Navigation Guide and the Maritime Department List of Lights and Radio Signals. They also include interim and preliminary notices of chart amendments. Each year begins with Notice No. 1 issued in the first week of January, and the numbering increases chronologically until the last week of January. Notices also report the publication of new maps or new versions, as well as the cancellation of previous versions.

Corrections are listed as coordinates and instructions or as cut-and-paste overlays and tiles. New editions of the Admiralty Lighthouse and Fog Signal Tables, Navigational Guides and Radio Station Lists will be available as they become available.

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Cumulative List of Notices to Mariners

This list is published twice a year in January and July and its main purpose is to provide a list of the current editions of all Admiralty charts, together with the serial numbers of the relevant Notices issued in the previous two years. It can be verified that the charts on board have not been corrected by comparing the charts with the cumulative list.

Annual Summary of Notices to Mariners

All temporary and preliminary notices from the previous year are published together in the Annual Summary of Notices to Mariners. This document provides a quick and practical reference for identifying temporary and permanent chart corrections. It also contains a summary of course corrections.

Chart Correction Software (Charts)

The printed version of the weekly Notices to Mariners is digitized using chart software. The software connects to a chart correction service provider, organizes the charts on board into a database, and inserts the corrections received onto the respective charts. Mariners can access the system using the chart number, print and apply any specific correction or all corrections that apply to any chart on board.

Offline databases and software are used on boar,d and correction information is attached as an attachment to weekly mailings. These two software programs are used to keep the chart correction database updated as well as the printed version of the weekly NOTAM.

NOTAM:

NOTAMsare issued to ships sailing in different areas. The world is divided into 21 navigation areas, and these notices are broadcast through the World NOTAM Service. Through a network of regional coordinators and national coordinators, important international, coastal and local navigational warnings and advisories are sent to ships, which receive these messages through very high frequency (VHF), high frequency/medium frequency (HF/MF) radio frequencies and satellite networks.

NAVTEX Notices:

These notices are broadcast through radio stations located in different coastal areas. They mainly transmit maritime, aerial, and distress warnings. They play a key role in coastal navigation warnings. Ships' NAVTEX receivers are used to receive navigational warnings. For example, in December 2004, NAVTEX stations took the lead in sending tsunami-related distress and emergency warnings to fishing and commercial vessels operating in the Indian Ocean and adjacent coastal areas.

Where is a correction recorded, and what does an inspector ask for?

Applying the correction is half the job. On a paper chart the number of the notice goes in the bottom left margin, permanent corrections in ink and temporary or preliminary ones in pencil so they can be rubbed out when they are cancelled. A chart with a clean margin has either never been corrected or has been corrected without a record.

The second record is the chart correction log, which lists every chart held against the notices applied to it. A port state control officer or a vetting inspector reads the log first, notes the number of the latest weekly notice on board, then picks a chart on the intended route and checks whether the margin agrees with the log.

SOLAS Chapter V requires the charts and publications for the intended voyage to be adequate and up to date, and a deficiency is written against that wording rather than against any correction count. The cumulative list answers the other half of the question, since it shows the current edition of each chart and so catches a folio corrected diligently on a superseded edition.

The same job on ECDIS

An electronic navigational chart is not corrected by hand. The hydrographic office issues update files that the system applies to the base cell in sequence, and the sequence matters: miss a week and later updates will not load until the gap is filled. The system reports the update number it holds for each cell, and that is what an inspector reads instead of a margin.

Access is licensed rather than owned. Cells are unlocked by permits issued under the IHO data protection scheme and those permits expire on a date, so a cell can be fully updated and still refuse to open because the licence has run out. Renewal dates belong on the same planning list as the weekly updates.

Two failures recur. One is a passage plan that crosses a cell the vessel holds no permit for, which is cheap to find at the planning stage and expensive to find at sea. The other is a ship carrying both paper and electronic charts and maintaining only the set in daily use, which leaves the backup arrangement out of date at the moment it is wanted.