Dear readers,
It sounded like an April Fool's joke, which caused a lot of head-shaking on the coast at the beginning of the year. But it was captured on NDR television and has been available until today. As part of the Maritime Safety Days, sailors were checked and charged if there were no up-to-date corrected nautical charts on board. The ship's coffers were then 100 euros lighter.
The whole thing took place on the west coast and was still comprehensible there in view of the constantly changing sea conditions. During inspections on the Baltic Sea coast, which had already been accompanied by YACHT in the past, the water protectors actually allowed it to suffice if there were paper charts on board that were no more than 2-3 years old.
In response to the question of whether the lack of daily updated paper nautical charts will also lead to fines on the Baltic Sea in future, we received an "overall response from the waterway police of the coastal states of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania".
According to this, the legal opinion of the penalising authority, the Directorate-General for Waterways and Shipping (GDWS), is that, in principle, all pleasure craft, whether used commercially or privately, must carry up-to-date paper charts of the respective navigation area, which may, however, be unofficial and may only consist of a section of a chart.
This is clear from Section 13(1)(2) SchSV, which explicitly mentions recreational craft and does not differentiate between large and small recreational craft within the meaning of the See-Sportbootverordnung. Electronic nautical charts can only be used as an additional navigational aid for recreational boating.
According to its own information, the waterway police only consider nautical charts to be up-to-date if they are up to date with the "Nachrichten für Seefahrer", which is published weekly in digital form. We reported on this in YACHT 15/2024which was published on 10 July.
Apart from a few letters to the editor, there was no reaction from those affected. At least not in this country. The editorial team has now received a copy of a letter from Denmark to the GDWS with questions that have been on the minds of Danish sailors since the current paper chart obligation in Germany became known.
"Sailors sailing under the Danish flag mainly navigate using plotters. In many cases, nautical charts are only a secondary purpose and rarely up to date," says the author of the letter, who has taken up the pen for his Danish club near the border and is asking for clarification, "as the article in YACHT means that the topic will certainly be discussed extensively at the annual general meetings of the Danish clubs this autumn".
As some of the publishers of recreational craft charts no longer offer correction sets and the plotter chips have to be sent in for correction several times a year, the following questions arose:
- Do the above regulations also apply to private pleasure craft flying the Danish flag?
- If so, how can it be proven that navigation is based on this and not on the plotter?
- How would it be possible to prove that the maps have been updated in accordance with the NfS?
As things stand at present, the only thing left to do is to advise pleasure craft flying the Danish flag: "Avoid German territorial waters in the months of May and June (time of intensive checks by the water police)..."
What at first glance makes you smile has a bitter aftertaste. In the perception of our northern neighbours, the German authorities' actions in this case are obviously excessive and unworldly. The German sailors, however, put up with it without resistance. It is by no means certain that the restrictive interpretation of the regulations by the executive bodies would stand up in an administrative court.
I can well understand the author of the letter and am looking forward to the authority's response.
Lasse Johannsen,
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of YACHT
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