Cheap or Exchange Digital / Paper Charts

[RonaldJJames]

My wife and I are planning to cruise the Great Lakes next year, followed by a couple of years cruising the East Coast and who knows where after that. I'm planning on navigating with digital charts backed up by paper charts and am concerned about the costs. If I were to cruise the same areas year after year that wouldn't be so bad, but since we'll be moving on after cruising an area I'm likely to have a large collection of digital and paper charts that I no longer need.

Does anyone know of a service where charts may be swapped?

Any other suggestions for obtaining charts for relatively short term use?

Thanks

[spinwing]

You have to do a risk assessment. When it comes to paper charts, don't get all of the larger scale charts if you are comfortable with the detail on your chart plotter. Depending on your home area, you might use the C-Map rental program in which they send you the chart chip you need for the transit area and you return aftet x days for a price. Cheaper than an annual subscription for every chip. You could also have another backup in a pocket GPS (Garmin's GPSMap 76 is what I use.) which could at least get you close enough to eyball the entrance or call for a tow. Good luck.

[hellosailor]

Paper charts are often available used from other cruisers (chat on the radio or ask at the docs) or from some of the sailing stores in the back of the magazines. US digital charts are all available free for download from NOAA and there's software available to read them for little to no cost. Start with that, buy an 11x17 inkjet and just print out what you need when you need it (on waterproof "plastic" paper) and you may not need to buy a lot of paper.

Digital is nice...but you can't sit on the rail with it.

[RonaldJJames]

Thanks. I like the idea of printing NOAA charts, particularly since my brother -in-law runs a printing shop. Does anyone know where I could get free or cheap printable charts (NOAA equlvalent) for the Canadian side of the Great Lakes?

Thanks again.

[RonaldJJames]

Hmmm, I've just re-checked the NOAA charts and it seems that the Canadian side of the Great Lakes is covered.

Sorry for the redundant posts!