Free Nautical Charts
BlooSee is a worldwide ocean mapping site, a mobile app, and a social network for sea lovers, offering free NOAA/United States, New Zealand/Pacific Ocean and Brazil charts. Bloosee leverages the power of the community to complement official nautical chart data with content generated by sailors, surfers, divers, kayakers, fisherman, NGO's, merchants, and other ocean communities. BlooSee's charts and data are layered over the satellite imagery of Google Maps/Google Earth.
Marine GeoGarage is the first nautical chart web portal in the Cloud. The website allows to freely view seamless georeferenced nautical raster chart layers issued from different international Hydrographic Offices (NOAA US, Linz NZ, DNH Brazil, SHN Argentina, SOHMA Uruguay, BSH Germany, NLHO Netherlands, WPL Bahamas) upon Google Maps imagery.
Additional free features are available for the user (voyage planning, waypoint and route monitoring with transfer to GPS, bearing and distance calculations).
OpenSeaMap.org is a free nautical chart. It's a worldwide Wiki-project and part of OpenStreetMap. Everybody can contribute their nautical knowledge about estuary, harbours and Marina, as geografic chart information and as textdata in a linked Wiki-port pilot book. OpenSeaMap covers worldwide all seas and the inland waterways, made for Sailors, divers, canoeists and other watersport enthusiasts. The chart shows lights, buoys, harbour information and a lot of other nautical geo-data. The chart displays also weather information like wind, air pressure, wave height on a detailed worldwide weather chart including a weather forecast for three days. Users can switch from the chart to an aerial photo display.
OpenSeaMap provides a free worldwide nautical chart for iPad, iPhone and iPod, and a vector chart for Garmin ship plotters. The chart is also available by Internet browsers.
TeamSurv creates charts using crowd sourced data. Boats log GPS and depth sounder information (plus compass heading and sea surface temperature when available) as they go about their normal activities, and upload the data to the server where the data undergoes quality checks and is corrected for tide height, speed of sound and other factors before being used to create a chart. Data can be collected using a hardware logger or through a number of software packages, and is open to all. Processed data can be viewed at the teamsurv.eu web site, overlaid on top of Google Maps.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now offering complete detailed nautical charts for free download for home printing for the entire US coast. The charts are continuously updated. This should improve the safety at sea, while reducing costs for mariners. Note, however, that these print-at-home charts will typically not offer the detail that "full size" NOAA charts do.
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