"Free" is not a term you often associate with boating. Some people will even tell you that the word "boat" is an acronym for "Break Out Another Thousand." But the U.S. government does indeed provide boaters with a great deal of material – much of at no charge – if you know where to look.
Uncle Sam's best-known free marine resource is probably electronic navigation charts. The U.S. government stands alone among nations, offering charts in both raster and vector formats for download at no charge. Other countries, such as Canada, still charge boaters to obtain their charts.
Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, commonly called NOAA, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offer charts for U.S. waters. These charts are regularly updated and can be printed or used with computer-based navigation programs to both plan a cruise and navigate your boat. (Mad Mariner's Hard facts on Software series described electronic charting in great detail.)
But charts are not the only resource offered by the government. Uncle Sam also offers lists of corrections to keep your charts up to date; Coast Pilots to let you know what to expect at the next port; and Pilot Charts to tell you the average weather for all parts of the globe. Using these tools together with your charts will give you a great deal of valuable information about the waters you travel.
Of course, there are stores that will change you for these same publications. But the information is available free to anyone with an Internet connection and some time – again, if you know where to look.
NOTICE TO MARINERS
Two important resources are the Notice to Mariners and the Local Notice to Mariners. All charts, even the electronic ones, have a publication date. This is the date that the chart was "locked in." Anything that changes after that date has to be changed by hand – by you – to keep the chart up to date.
These changes can be as simple as a buoy that has been temporarily removed for maintenance or as sophisticated as the addition of a new channel. For the chart to be considered "legal," it has to be updated, especially if you are a licensed captain who carries paying passengers.
The U.S. Coast Guard is one of the agencies responsible for keeping track of all the changes on charts and notifying mariners of those changes. To do this, the government produces two sets of documents, known as the Notice to Mariners and the Local Notice to Mariners. In the past, these weekly publications were sent to captains who had provided the Coast Guard with a mailing address. Now, they are posted electronically.
COAST GUARDInformation on the Local Notice to Mariners can be found at the Coast Guard's Web site, and you can use that site to download the most recent local notices in a PDF format.
A Local Notice to Mariners is published for each of the nine Coast Guard districts. If your boating is confined to a single area, you can sign up for the local notice of just that district. The local notices are the first published source of changes to charts and related publications. The notice system is also used for notifications about outages to GPS satellites, changes in technical specifications and even information about important events that might affect boating traffic.
Information on the Local Notice to Mariners can be found at the Coast Guard's website, and you can use this site to download the most recent local notices in a PDF format (this makes them searchable, by the way). You can also sign up to be notified via email as new notices become available. Again, this is all free.
The Notice to Mariners, also published on a weekly basis, covers the entire collection of U.S. nautical publications and are not restricted to a specific location. It is designed to be used by oceangoing vessels and may not always have corrections for charts that are inland of the major bays and sounds. In the past, information generally was published first in the Local Notice to Mariners and then was added to the Notice to Mariners, but with the advent of electronic databases and online dissemination, that's not always the case anymore.
Because the Notice to Mariners is published by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, based on information prepared jointly by the Coast Guard and NOAA's National Ocean Service, they are available from the NGA website, also in PDF format. Because of the size of the notices, they can be downloaded as a single file or in smaller subsections as needed. Generally, it's advisable to read all of the notices online before deciding what to download and store.
The Notice to Mariners is not limited to U.S. charts and navigational publications. More than 60 countries produce nautical charts and use some form of publication to keep them updated. Canada, Great Britain and most of the European countries have some form of online distribution.
LIGHT LISTS
Most nautical charts contain a great deal of information about lighthouses and buoys, but some information is just too involved to print on a chart. Information about light sectors, periods of reduced intensity or removal, as well as a description of the light's physical structure, often have to be left off. However, the Coast Guard produces a companion publication for each set of charts, called the U.S. Light Lists, which includes all of this information and more. The Light Lists are organized geographically and go through the lights in a linear fashion, so if you can find one light, the ones above and below it on the list are usually nearby.
The back section of the lists also includes an alphabetical index, so if you know the name but not the location of a light, you can use the index to guide you to the proper section. The Light Lists also give the latitude and longitude of major lights, making it easier to find them on the charts. Finally, the Light Lists contain facts on the structure of U.S. lights, a guide to abbreviations and information on figuring out how far a light can be seen in various atmospheric conditions. Again, all free, free, free.
The Light Lists are available online on the Coast Guard's website, and are generally updated annually. Lists are kept current using the information in each Local Notice to Mariners and the Notice to Mariners. It is easiest to download the entire Light List for the area you are interested in and then print out the pages pertaining to the charts you are using. This is especially helpful if you will be visiting a new area and you want to have the most recent information for that area.
COAST PILOTS
COAST GUARDThe Coast Pilot is a government version of a cruising guide, giving detailed information on geographics.
While the Light Lists provide very specific information about navigational lights, the U.S. Coast Pilots offer a much larger amount of information about an area, a body of water or rules that might affect your travels.
Coast Pilots are also organized geographically and are generally numbered counterclockwise around the continental United States, with sections for the Great Lakes, Hawaii, Alaska and the outlying American islands, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and South Pacific possessions.
The Coast Pilot is a government – which is to say, free – version of a cruising guide, giving detailed information on everything from anchorage areas to the telephone numbers for lift bridges and port captains. Pictures of harbor areas and channels give a bird's-eye view of approaches and anchorages. Details like the course and distances between major ports can be found within each section, and the information can always be referenced back to the applicable charts. A good technique for choosing the charts you might need in a new area is to review the information in the applicable Coast Pilot and then make your decisions based on how much detail is described there.
One of the most useful functions of the Coast Pilot is to provide expanded information about what is on the related charts. All U.S. charts bear at least one note that indicates which copy of the Coast Pilot is directly related to the chart. Most charts have a dozen notes or even more. Each note contains a bare description of the information that the chart maker feels is important and directs the user to the expanded information in the Coast Pilot. It could be related to navigational information, magnetic variation differences or even the location, size and, most important, hours of operation of military practice areas and bombing ranges. Boating near such an area is a mistake you only make once, so the utility of the Coast Pilot become clear.
Coast Pilots have been around for centuries and can still be purchased in a bound format from nautical bookstores and chandleries, as well as from NOAA. However, like the other government publications, the Coast Pilots can be downloaded free, in whole or in part, directly from the Coast Guard website. To keep your copies up to date, corrections can be found in the Notice to Mariners.
PILOT CHARTS
For the sailor or boater headed offshore, especially in the Caribbean Sea, advance weather information is vital. While an accurate forecast is important for day-to-day planning, sometimes trips have to be planned months (and even years) ahead, and it can be helpful to know what has happened in the past.
Perhaps one of the most thorough publications available free is "The American Practical Navigator," also known as Bowditch for its first editor, Nathaniel Bowditch. It was first released in 1799.
Pilot charts are small-scale representations of large portions of the ocean, showing (in blocks of 5-degrees latitude by 5-degrees longitude) the average direction and force of the winds over a century or more of observations. The data is available for each month of the year. They also include the tracks and frequencies of major storms, as well as indications of areas to avoid during periods of the year when bad weather is prevalent. Finally, they show the general position and strength of "permanent" high- and low-pressure systems.
Pilot charts work best when kept on the computer, because they do not change frequently and are reduced to an almost unreadable size if printed (imagine the entire Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea on a single 8.5-by-11-inch page). Leaving the pilot charts on the computer and using the zoom function in Adobe Acrobat, however, can bring up the notes and details at a size appropriate for reading. These charts are available on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency website, in the publications section (publications 105 through 109).
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Exploring the publications sections of the NGA and the Coast Guard websites can direct you to a wealth of information that is free for the taking. Sailing Directions (Enroute) provide the same sort of information as the U.S. Coast Pilots, but they cover the ports outside of the United States and are particularly helpful to oceangoing vessels. Sight-reduction tables are available online for celestial navigation. There are publications with information on radio navigation aids, and Chart Number 1 lists every symbol to be found on nautical charts and its meaning.
Perhaps one of the most thorough publications available free is "The American Practical Navigator," also known as "Bowditch" for its first editor, Nathaniel Bowditch. It was first released in 1799. The rights to the book were purchased by the Navy's Hydrographic Office in 1866, and it has remained a government publication ever since.
The Practical Navigator has been through more than 70 revisions over the years, the most recent being a major rewrite in 1995, along with a reprinted bicentennial edition in 2002. All things navigational are considered in the book, on one level or another, and it covers subjects from weather systems and wave mechanics to electronic charting requirements and satellite navigation systems.
Although not always written in the most entertaining style – it is, after all, a military publication – it is an important starting point for further study and can always serve as a reference. Best of all, it's – yup – free!
Frank Mummert spent 15 years in the Navy where he taught nuclear engineering. He is a licensed captain. Currently he teaches sailing, and for the last two years has served as an instructor for sailors trying to obtain their captain's licenses through the Mariner's School, which is headquartered in Princeton, N.J.