Cool: NOAA has put all nautical charts online for free

[Recursion]

http://www.charts.noaa.gov/PDFs/PDFs.shtml

File this under "stuff the government actually does pretty well, thank you..."

[Unrepentant Fenian]

1. That's a great resource. Thank you!

[jberryhill]

2. Ever wonder about the name?

Did they intentionally make it come out as a homonym of "Noah", or is it merely an accident that this agency would be in charge of weather forecasting and sailing?

[Ghost Dog]

3. US only.

[Recursion]

4. The "N" in "NOAA" stands for "National"

I don't think there's a body responsible for mapping all coastlines, though that would be a good idea.

[Ghost Dog]

5. UK Hydrographic Office does that ("Admiralty" Charts):

http://www.ukho.gov.uk/onlinecatalogue/index.asp

But their products are not made available for free.

[Recursion]

8. I almost said "except maybe the Royal Navy"

But I didn't know if that extended past the "Master & Commander" days...

[A Little Weird]

11. Different agency works on foreign coastlines

NOAA does U.S. coasts and inland waters and (I think) Nat'l Geospatial Intelligence Agency does foreign coastlines. But I don't think they can be downloaded as PDF as far as I'm aware.

[GoCubsGo]

6. Our tax dollars hard at work.

Not exactly "free", but still nice to have access to them without having to pay even more.

[Recursion]

7. Fair enough. How about "no use fee"? (nt)

[GoCubsGo]

9. Perfect! n/t

[1000words]

10. I don't see any images from the provided PDF links

Anyone else?

[Recursion]

12. They're HUGE and take a while to load

I had better luck downloading them and just viewing them locally.

[1000words]

14. Ah ... thank you.

Great post, btw.

[morningfog]

13. This is incredible. Thanks for posting.