Sailors on the North Sea and Baltic Sea who previously had the recreational craft charts (officially: official charts for small and recreational craft) from the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) on their chart tables will have to make a change: The BSH is converting the remaining small and recreational craft charts to a larger format by 2020. This is justified with the improved clarity of a larger chart in addition to digital navigation. In practice, however, this means that the charts in the handy A2 format will be abolished and users will have to look for alternatives.
We start with the card setsThe Elbe to Hamburg (3010),North Frisian Islands (3013) andBetween the Elbe, Weser and Heligoland (3014), which will no longer be updated and published in the previous multi-part chart set for the 2017 season. In future, the nautical charts from this area will also only be available for recreational boaters in double A1 format and only as individual charts for 15 euros each. The charts are not only intended for recreational boating, but are "available to all skippers who must or wish to navigate with official nautical charts", according to the BSH press release.
From the beginning of April, the new charts will be available from the usual sales outlets, bookshops and ship chandlers, "but we don't have an exact date yet," says Susanne Dirkwinkel, who is responsible for recreational boating charts at specialist dealer HanseNautic. Dirkwinkel assumes that the changeover will have a negative impact on quite a few regular customers who have been travelling with the familiar BSH chart set for years. "The downside of the new charts is that they are twice as big and therefore unwieldy, and at 15 euros each they will also be more expensive." The set of maps for the Elbe from the Süderelbbrücken bridges to Scharhörn, for example, previously cost 64.50 euros for a set of 13 maps. In future, at least ten of the new maps at 15 euros each will be needed to cover the same area, and the same applies to the North Frisian Islands.
As before, the chart corrections will be published weekly in the "Nachrichten für Seefahrer". The other sections of the German North Sea coast and the BSH nautical charts for the Baltic Sea will also be gradually converted to the new format: The DIN A1 nautical chart series for the entire North Sea should be available from March 2018. The BSH will convert the nautical charts for the Baltic Sea in 2019 and 2020.
Sailors who do not want to deal with the 59 x 84 centimetre nautical charts in future have no choice but to switch to other providers: NV Verlag offers small charts of the entire North Sea coast, including the areas of North Friesland that were already affected in 2017 ( NV.atlas Nordfriesland - Sylt to Helgoland & Eider ) and Elbe ( NV.atlas Elbe - Helgoland to Hamburg ). The Elbe is also offered by Kartenwerft-Verlag, which specialises in inland maps, in the DIN A3 ring binder format which occasionally also has coastal maps such as the Bay of Kiel in its programme. Baltic Sea maps in a handy format are available from both NV-Verlag and Delius Klasing available.
