How big is your chart table?

Greenheart

Greenheart

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Silly question, this. I don't have an Admiralty chart to hand, and I'm redrawing my cabin layout (entirely speculatively); I've always dreamed of a chart table big enough not to have to work on a chart that's folded, but I can't remember the exact dimensions, and I can't find them listed anywhere.

Anybody got a full-size chart, and a tape-measure?

On the subject, is anybody wretchedly frustrated, or entirely content, working on a chart-table the size of a tea-tray? So much navigation today seems to be done without paper, I feel elderly just asking. Am I alone? :rolleyes:
 
Yup, it was the big, old-fashioned charts I was thinking of. Lovely, to look at the whole area rather than a relevant but narrow little corner.

The littler ones remind me of a loathsome road atlas where one may know the road one's on right now, but can't easily judge the shape or scale of the route ahead, nor the distance covered already.

Granted, a chart table four foot wide may raise eyebrows amongst persons more concerned with fashion and convenience and bringing aboard shore-styled furnishings, but...dear me, I'm getting my own preferences confused, now.

Maybe I'll set up my 3'x3' wing-backed armchair (yet to be marinised) in front of the saloon table, and curse anyone who dares put a coffee cup or wine glass on the sacred paperwork... :D
 
My usual charts are the Imray folios, which are 42x60cm (same as the Admiralty Leisure ones sarabande mentions).

My chart table is L-shaped, with the main part being 80 wide (I think) by 60 deep (must be as it just fits an Imray chart in "portrait" layout). There's then a small leg outboard of the seat which is just big enough for a (closed) pilot book.

Not bad for a small 24 footer I feel.

Pete
 
I did wonder about Sarabande's 223'' measurement. Something along the lines of the Bayeaux Tapestry. Well, William 1st did wait a while for the wind to Hastings...maybe he needed a well-proportioned chart to find his way?
 
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I didn't doubt it for a moment.

Interesting thought, though...an eighteen foot chart table. Presumably one could sellotape the sheets together, and find one's way down to the Bahamas, without ever folding or unfolding a chart.

Cue dusty, elderly, misogenistic remark...

I always find women and young people don't have any idea how far or in which direction they've travelled, or any understanding of the differing scales on maps that cover a small or vast piece of ocean or land. One enormous single chart of a vessel's journeying might teach some spatial awareness. :rolleyes:
 
Pete vs. Pete...I side with Pete.

Who needs a plotter, when you have a decent chart table?

A few decades back, it was supposed that in the future we would live on pills. Fortunately it occurred to someone that buying, preparing, cooking and eating food, is pleasurable. So, we have kitchens rather than cabinets of nutrient tablets.

Likewise, charting a course on paper is fun! I suppose if you're a professional, or continually in a hurry, that isn't relevant. High-tech's fine to fall back on, as long as it works, but I've never enjoyed using it...the plotter's designer only had efficiency in mind.

Charts are fun, and pleasant to work with. Plotters just aren't.
 
I've a reasonably sized chart table which easily takes portfolio sized charts but the larger ones require folding.
I envy you if you'll have the space for a full chart. The problem is in my boat is that the saloon table is just too far away and down a step from the companionway, so the chart table becomes a dumping ground for everything coming into the boat.
I fell foul of my own my own 'rules' about it last weekend, when I was caught dumping the shopping from the chandlery on it by swmbo.
 
Yes, considering plotters didn't really exist 15 years ago, and now every seventeen footer seems to have one, the manufacturers must've paid for their marina berths with ease, on the strength of our nav-station downsizing.

The plotter is probably as prudent a thing to use as the inertia-reel seatbelt in a car, so I'm not anti-them. But I'm not persuaded these bits of kit do anything for the actual enjoyment of yachting.

Most of us who raise sail could have chosen a motorboat instead. It must be easier to motor...a lot less clambering about and inconvenient ropework, less labour and hardly any wind-influenced course changing.

The truth is, we enjoy all the challenging obstructions and the necessity to think about getting there, rather than just pushing buttons. I do, anyway. Personally, I'd rather work out my heading on the chart, than read it off the LCD and steer as instructed. :)
 
"I envy you if you'll have the space for a full chart."

Don't. The description 'full size chart table' only ever meant 'large enough for an Admiralty chart folded in half' - that's 20.5 x 28 inches; anything larger would be disproportionate in a small yacht.

I had a chart table built for my old boat. It takes Leisure Charts folded as necessary, A2 pages from OS maps for creek crawling.
Not ideal but good enough when fuses blow or batteries fail so gps and chartplotter become useless ornaments!

Navseatcharttable.jpg


And yes, it does get cluttered! A partial solution was to drop the cooker sufficiently to add another working surface

Cookercoverbookcase.jpg
 
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QUOTE:...when fuses blow or batteries fail so gps and chartplotter become useless ornaments!

I echo that thought, but I must tread carefully - I'm at risk of sounding like one of those survivalist-types, who positively enjoy power-cuts and tree-felling storms, because they finally get to employ their military training or their cupboards full of battery lanterns and boxes of long-life ex-army ration packs, ditchwater-sterilisation tablets, etc... :D

I like not needing volts and satellites for jobs that my brain can do just as well, if shown how and given a reason.

The chart table was always home to a bookshelf too, and the feeling of seeing (as if from a great height) the coast and open sea for many miles around, on the chart, and having pilot books and almanacs to refer to, is a really pleasant one, which I've never replicated the sense of, from any plotter.

Once again, I'd say I wouldn't want not to have a plotter, but I'd hate to use it often, or to habitually rely on it.
 
Tom Price said:
"I envy you if you'll have the space for a full chart."

I Don't.
Click to expand...
Hi Tom,
I could use it as a dumping ground as well if it was bigger :)
The previous owner has dropped the cooker as/your boat yet I have to improve the work surface to put things on in the galley.
I'm at the planning stage now.
 
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This says it all

A call to SWMBO, by now proficient at recording the forecast, indicated an imminent end to the fine spell, which made it decision time. Emerging from the sea lock after dark and finding flat calm in the outer harbour, when asked my destination I replied “Chichester” and set off. One problem: a tired domestic battery had not survived the cruise. Lights dimmed, radio faded – and the gps had given up the ghost.

So the return crossing was rather more taxing than the way over: paper and pencil were resurrected to draw vectors on the chart, tidal atlas consulted to determine offsets, course was calculated and I headed for home – back to school indeed! This time there was a lot of traffic but all were prepared to take evasive action thanks to AIS (theirs not mine). One exception was a cruise liner slowly plodding towards Tilbury not wanting to arrive early, and very difficult to identify a red or green amongst that glare. Just before dawn St Cats was seen flashing to port, the Nab to starb’d, and in increasing wind and choppy seas the ferry Normandy from Caen overtook before crossing the Bar and enteing harbour to secure at 0840, eleven hours out of Le Havre.
 
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