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Nautical charts are an important navigational tool even when you're familiar with a waterway. A nautical chart helps you figure out which way to go, how deep the water is, and the location of harbors.
Nautical charts specifically depict water areas of importance. Things like land contours, water depths and more are included. If you need to know where to find red buoys and green buoys, the nautical chart has your back. Let’s take a look at how and why you should read nautical charts.
Several outstanding boating safety organizations teach people how to use nautical charts, and every boater should use those opportunities. Before you take a class – or even if you’re a seasoned sailor plotting your next cruise – it helps to familiarize yourself with common chart elements.
In order to read a chart, you interpret longitude and latitude lines to determine your coordinates, which is your position. You have to understand and interpret different symbols like depth, scale, and navigation marks. Using these symbols, you find a safe course and plot it on the chart.
Whether you want a standard navigation chart — just something simple to get you where you’re going — or something with super-detailed depth contours or relief shading to provide a clearer view of bottom structure for fishing purposes, have no fear.
Lenny explains what the different colors on a nautical chart mean as well as water depth, buoys and channel markers, latitude and longitude, reading nautical charts symbols, prominent...
In fact, nautical charts delineate both what’s visible and what’s not visible. Thankfully, for essentially every waterway nationwide, there’s a chart. If you’ve never read a nautical chart before, though, here’s how to understand all the markings on them: Scale; Depths; Contour lines; Aids to navigation; Symbols & abbreviations; Distance