POD Charts - How up to date?  

 

How up to date is my print-on-demand chart, really?When the Coast Guard promulgates a notice of a change to a chart, does it instantly flow out digitally throughout the system, showing up immediately in print-on-demand (POD) charts?  No.  Cartographers at NOAA must take the text and diagram description of the change and translate this into a graphic representation on the affected charts.  This may be done on computerized drafting programs, but still requires human processing and interpretation.  One change may affect several charts on different scales, requiring a different graphic representation for each.  These graphic translations of the change become digital files, which are then released by NOAA to OceanGraphix to be sent via the internet to update digital files at the chart agents from which POD charts are printed.

At Captain's, as we see POD charts come off our printer one chart may be correct through notice #10, the next chart, in the same run, may be corrected through notice #12, and the next one through notice #11.  Why is this?  The chart that is correct though notice #12 may not have had any changes for several notices, so, immediately, it can be noted as correct up to notice #12.  But the chart that is only printed as correct through notice #10, may have several recent changes for which graphic files are being drafted, but have not yet been released.  At Captain's we can tell in advance of printing a chart, which edition number the chart will be, but we cannot foretell which weekly notice to mariner the chart will be corrected through until we actually print the chart.

If you are conscientious about correcting charts, you know that POD does not eliminate chart correcting.  It simply means that you are starting with a chart that is much more up to date than its lithographed counterpart, so that you can continue correcting from that point forward, and not have to go back to do all the historical corrections from the last edition date.  Each POD chart clearly states which notice it is corrected through so that you have a known starting point from which to apply future corrections and, perhaps, very recent corrections which are appearing in notices on the internet, but haven't yet made it into a digital translation on affected POD charts.  With this in mind, we feel POD charts represent a real value and substantial advance in providing charts as up to date as is technically feasible.  In most cases, the POD charts we provide are considerably more up to date than any software electronic counterpart we could sell.