Have your say on the affordability of Admiralty paper charts

Do you still use paper charts, and should they be more affordable?

Credit: Pete Niesen/Alamy

From Pratical Boat Owner by Laura Hodgetts

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is asking skippers and other maritime users to help inform the future affordability of Admiralty paper charts.

The affordability of Admiralty paper charts ’emerged as a significant concern, particularly among leisure boaters’ in a recent survey by the UKHO – prompting another chance for leisure boaters to have a say.

Although globally, digital navigation is now the primary means of navigation for skippers and navigators, and the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) has a ‘digital first’ focus to its training, paper charts continue to play an important role in supporting safe navigation for many mariners.

Maintaining traditional skills is strongly advised for skippers to counteract the threats of spoofing or jamming to electronic kit, such as chartplotters, which have Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) functionality.

The Royal Institute for Navigation (RIN) Small Craft Group’s (SCG) advises in its latest booklet Electronic Navigation Systems – Guidance for safe use on leisure vessels that:
‘For long ocean passages or in situations where electronic systems fail – due to technical breakdown, hacking, or signal jamming – ‘traditional methods remain an essential, reliable fallback’.

As part of its ongoing work to ensure the long-term sustainability of its paper chart service, the UKHO has been exploring changes to the way Admiralty paper charts are produced, maintained and updated.

Have your say to help shape future pricing decisions by taking part in the latest UKHO survey. 

Credit: Katy Stickland/Future Plc

Over the summer, the UKHO conducted research with the maritime community to gather views on proposed changes to its Admiralty Standard Nautical Charts (SNCs) and Small Craft Charts (SCCs).

The research supports the UKHO’s plans to automate chart production and, ultimately, chart maintenance to help secure the future provision of paper charts.

The survey explored two key areas of change:A rescheme of UK charting, merging the currently separate SNC and SCC charts into a single scheme that supports two different chart sizes.
Changes to how charts are updated, moving to pictorial updates instead of the current text-based approach.

More than 600 survey responses helped the UKHO identify several key themes.

Respondents highlighted the importance of maintained chart coverage, confidence and usability.

The RYA reports that findings also reinforced the continuing role of paper charts in supporting digital navigation, with more than 80% of respondents using paper charts alongside digital charts.
Affordability of Admiralty paper charts ‘a significant concern’

Paper charts were most commonly used for pre-departure appraisal and planning, while around a third of respondents said they still form part of their primary navigation method.

Affordability also emerged as a significant concern, particularly among leisure boaters.

In recent years, the UKHO has used chart pricing to help sustain its paper chart service against falling demand.

The survey results highlight the impact this is having on mariners’ ability to access the charts they need.

In response to these findings, the UKHO is now conducting a pricing survey to understand acceptable price points for the reschemed UK charts.

Leisure boaters are among those being asked to have a say on the affordability of Admiralty paper charts before the consultation ends on Saturday, 31 October 2026.

Your feedback will help to inform the UKHO’s future approach to paper chart pricing and support its ongoing work to maintain a sustainable paper chart service.

Gdynia and the dream of a maritime Poland

$The Polish passenger ship 'Pilsudski' at Gdynia, 1935.
Credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo

From EngelsbergIdeas by Juliette Bretan

A century ago, a Baltic fishing village began its transformation into a bustling port.
Gdynia embodied interwar Poland’s modernising ambitions, but it could not guarantee the country’s security.

The penultimate point in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points for peace negotiations to end the First World War was the most idealised of its goals.
It called for an independent Polish state to be created, and not, as the eminent Polish-American historian Piotr Wandycz notes, resurrected – and certainly not ‘based on historical principles’, mapped on to the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that had been erased from the European map in 1795.
This would be a new Poland.
Wilson called for it to include ‘territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations’ (this would become difficult to ascertain and haunt the future of the region); and the document called for ‘political and economic independence and territorial integrity […] guaranteed by international covenant’ (plans, again, which were difficult to put into practice).
It was a puzzle.

 

Poland catalogue of ENC (HOPN) in the GeoGarage platform 

 

There was another clause in the mix, too: that Poland ‘should be assured a free and secure access to the sea’.

Poles, who had pushed for this, saw the nautical sphere as a necessity for the country.
As the historian Marta Grzechnik argues, Poles also wanted to shed the country’s image as a fragile land-locked nation.
It was also essential if Poland was to become a modern nation – ‘far-sighted’, as Grzechnik puts it – and a global nation, even an imperial one.

The problem was that access to the sea in the interwar period had a German-shaped obstacle, or, rather, two of them.
Poland had been awarded a small strip of land in the north to provide maritime links, but it was pincered between Germany proper and East Prussia, with no sizeable ports in sight; nor could it rely on the Free City of Danzig for any maritime ambitions, because although Poland had the right to use the port, Danzig was predominantly German in population, and hence tensions were frequent.
In 1920, Poland decided it would have to build its own port in the region.
In the end, experts selected a fishing and holiday village, Gdynia, as the best spot to put the plan into action due to hydrographic conditions and rail connections – and it was promptly overhauled as a modern port, fit for a modern nation.

Gdynia harbor with the GeoGarage platform

 

Gdynia, more than any other city, might be seen then as a sort of microcosm for interwar Poland itself – it was an alternative Polish capital.
Yes, Warsaw, the real capital, was the glorified location of the Miracle on the Vistula: the decisive triumph of Polish forces against the westward march of the Soviets in 1920, which pushed back the spread of communism into Europe.
Warsaw was glitzy and glamorous, a true urban marvel, featuring revolving dance floors, Art Deco skyscrapers, prosperity, but also mounting tensions and poverty.
Yes, Vilnius (then Wilno) was also a bulwark of patriotism, although to the chagrin of the newly independent Lithuania, which had broken ties with Poland because of Poland’s seizure of the city.
Lviv (then Lwów), too, had a claim to be the nation’s capital of culture.

Yet Gdynia was a new city, symbolising the modernisation of the country, and its high hopes in the interwar period.
Work on the port began in 1921; by 1926, 100 years ago this year, the once sleepy fishing village had been granted city rights and, by the end of the 1930s, it was a bustling maritime metropolis.
Its construction into the jewel of modern Poland was matched by suitable architecture: functionalist buildings, sparkling in whitewash, with curves and perpendicular lines, and sweeping, grinning windows on every façade, wide to the hopeful Baltic Sea beyond.
It was a Bauhaus fever dream.

Poets, writers and filmmakers celebrated Gdynia, too, in modernist art.
Grzechnik notes that poets wrote of the city’s machinery and its modernist architecture, while the 1935 melodrama film Rapsodia Bałtyku (Rhapsody of the Baltic), about two navy officers, celebrated Gdynia for its military prowess as well as its maritime prosperity.
By the 1930s, Gdynia was the hub of the Polish navy, and served commercial and passenger traffic.

It was also a place that illustrated the darker side of Poland’s burgeoning modernity.
Tens of thousands used the new port as a point of departure for a new life across the Atlantic, from a modernist three-storey passenger hall, constructed at the port in 1933 for this very purpose.
While the construction of Gdynia was testament to utopian ideas of a modern Poland, many did not see their future in the country, where modernity was still uneven and poverty rife.
The building they departed from now houses the Emigration Museum, witness to centuries of Polish émigré history.
Moreover, Gdynia was a stronghold of the Maritime and Colonial League – a mass Polish social organisation promoting the creation of colonies for Poland.
The city’s construction was a political statement that spoke to a new Polish prosperity and self-confidence, but it could not escape the shadow of conflict with Germany, and the difficulties of creating a new Polish future alongside neighbours with expansionist designs.

Gdynia was the fulfilment of Wilson’s promise in part, but not in whole – it was a gateway to the Baltic, and a symbol of Poland’s freedom.
It was also a place where, however much Poles tried, they were not able to guarantee the one element of the sea-life they thought indispensable for the future: security.

Germany (BSH) layer update in the GeoGarage platform

 

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Underwater mountains, canyons hold secrets of Malaysia's seas

Navigational chart sections of Malaysia’s waters. 

Pic courtesy of National Hydrographic Centre

 

From NST by Fuad Nizam

 

Beneath Malaysia's vast maritime waters lies a dramatic landscape of underwater mountains, ridges, valleys and canyons, much of which remains unmapped to modern hydrographic standards.

National Hydrographic Centre (NHC) director-general Rear Admiral Dr Najhan Md Said said understanding this hidden terrain was vital to safe navigation, maritime security and sovereignty.
"If you drain the water from the South China Sea, you will see a terrain just as breathtaking as anything on land. 
"There are underwater mountains, massive ridges, steep trenches and ancient riverbeds that once ran above water thousands of years ago," he told the New Sunday Times.

Najhan also serves as the vice-chair of the International Hydrographic Organisation — Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names, comprising 12 international experts.

The sub-committee is responsible for establishing internationally consistent nomenclature and naming guidelines for undersea features, ensuring uniformity across nautical charts, bathymetric maps and scientific publications worldwide.

He said high-resolution bathymetric surveys had mapped extreme depths across Malaysia's maritime domain.

 

 

Names of undersea features of Malaysia and its locations.

Pic courtesy of National Hydrographic Centre

Seabed mapping, he added, shared some principles with astronomy, but also carried a strong connection to national identity and heritage.

"When astronomers discover a new star, individual scientists are often allowed to put their names on it. But under international maritime rules, individuals cannot name undersea features. That privilege belongs strictly to sovereign nations.
"To date, Malaysia has secured official recognition for 17 undersea feature names, most of them in the bathymetrically rich waters off Sabah and Sarawak," he said.

NHC personnel looks at one of the many hydrographic survey materials at the centre in Port Klang.

 

 

Malaysia is gradually contributing information such as data on underwater geographical features, as shown on the monitor, to international initiatives.

 

The New Sunday Times was provided with advanced 3D acoustic renderings from the NHC, showing the varied topography of some seabeds in Sabah and Sarawak.

Among them are the Santubong Seamount, a jagged, volcanic-like spire; Kenyalang Hill, with its sharp, conical summit; and the Rafflesia Hill, a massive dome-shaped mound.

Measured against the Kuala Lumpur skyline, the seabed's peaks hold their own.

What is Seamount?
A distinct generally equidimensional elevation greater than 1000m above the surrounding relief as measured from the deepest isobath that surrounds most of the feature

Standardization of Undersea Feature Names Guidelines B-6 (Proposal Form Terminology)

Edition 4.2.0 – October 2019.

 

Santubong Seamount rises about 1,400m from the ocean floor, roughly twice the height of Merdeka 118, the country's tallest building. 

Yet its summit lies about 500m below the surface.

Rafflesia Hill, at about 450m, matches the Petronas Twin Towers, while Kenyalang Hill, at about 320m, is 100m shorter than KL Tower (421m).

Rungus, Kadazandusun and Bidayuh Hills each rise about 900m, a third taller than Merdeka 118.

Submerged mountain chains include Iban Ridge, Bajau Ridge and Kimaragang Ridge, which stretch across the ocean floor.

The seabed also features deep chasms and valleys, including the steep-walled Meranti, Chengal and Anggerik canyons, and the broad, flat-bottomed Mawar Valley.

 

 Bidayuh Hill on the GEBCO Gazetter (NOAA)

 

Najhan said naming undersea features has helped preserve Malaysia's cultural identity, with internationally recognised names documenting the country's heritage on global maps and in scientific records.
"Through ongoing high-resolution bathymetric surveys, the NHC has identified and prepared another 45 undersea features for formal registration and submission to the sub-committee on undersea feature names.
"Imagine looking at an international ocean gazetteer or a global map and seeing an underwater mountain in your home waters named in a foreign tongue. 
"It feels like a personal sting to national pride," said Najhan.

It is odd then that only 63 per cent of our maritime domain has been surveyed to modern high-density hydrographic standards, as National Hydrographic Centre (NHC) director-general Rear Admiral Dr Najhan Md Said revealed

 

He added that hydrographers had a duty to not only map the seabed, but also ensure its features bore the names reflecting Malaysia's history, culture and identity.

Links :

• NST : National Hydrographic Centre seeks legal status to safeguard Malaysia's maritime interests
• The Star : Beneath the surface, beyond the horizon 

The power, the beauty and the colours of a breaking wave

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