Nautical charts

awn offers a comprehensive range of various nautical charts. Nautical charts are the classic means of orientation and navigation on the water and summarize various information about waters, they depict sea routes, coasts, shoals, navigation marks, fairways and other information about a particular sea area. In addition to the classic paper nautical charts, there are now also nautical charts in electronic form.

Nautical Chart History

Paper nautical charts have existed in the form they do today since the 18th century. The evolution of classical nautical charts into the electronic nautical charts most commonly used today is closely related closely related to the development of metrology and other technologies. After all, today's navigation on the water is only possible with such precision thanks to satellites and GPS.

Chart content

In addition to scale and the year in which they were issued, nautical charts show the coastline, depth contours, wrecks and other obstacles within the water, warnings about dangerous currents, traffic separation areas, waterways, restricted areas, and a grid of degrees of longitude and latitude. Sea marks such as lighthouses and beacons are also marked on nautical charts. The depths shown Depths refer to nautical chart datum, which is usually somewhat deeper than the reference horizon for land charts.

Printed or electronic nautical charts?

Today there are two different types of nautical charts. One is printed (paper) nautical charts, and the other is electronic-nautical-charts.

Electronic nautical charts have the advantage that updating the charts does not have to be done by drawing them in by hand, but can be done quickly and easily by updates automatically.On the other hand, paper nautical charts have the great advantage of being usable even in the event of a complete system failure, while electronic nautical charts are not usable in such a case.

Sea charts - paper form

Because of the system independence of paper nautical charts, they are still widely used and it is quite advisable to always have the appropriate nautical charts on board for emergencies. In order to be able to use paper charts correctly for navigation, an appropriate set of charts or navigation-sets is required. This navigation set includes a compass, course triangles and a pencil. pencil. With the help of this cutlery, positions can be determined according to different procedures.

Sea Charts - Electronic Sea Charts

Electronic nautical charts generally have the advantage that they can be interconnected with GPS as a position sensor and thus provide a chart image that travels with the ship.

In the field of digital nautical charts, a distinction is also made between two different types. The raster maps fall back to material, which was won by scanning and supply thus a Copy of the nautical charts in paper form on the screen. However, since the resolution of these charts is insufficient for on-screen navigation, another type of digital nautical chart has been developed.

This second type of electronic nautical charts are vector charts. These draw their information from a database and all the points contained in them are intelligent units of information, which ensure that vector charts are flexible and much more suitable for on-screen reproduction of nautical charts. awn offers vector charts from various manufacturers such as C-Map, Garmin and Navionics as well as a variety of electronic nautical charts from other suppliers, which can be found under other electronic nautical charts. You can also find the right navigation software for your needs at awn.