National Geospatial Agency (NGA) charts of waters outside of United States coastal and inland waters are once again being made available for online ordering or print-on-demand (POD) at chart resellers, according to Landfall of Stamford, Connecticut. After a nine-month hiatus, Landfall, a retailer of offshore safety and navigational equipment and supplies, is making POD charts from OceanGrafix available to the public. During this period NGA charts were only available as digital downloads. Landfall reports that the POD charts will be much less costly than British Admiralty paper charts, which were the only suitable substitute available in North America during this period.
“Over the last few years, OceanGrafix has revolutionized the chart industry using POD technology to provide mariners with the most up-to-date charts possible, but until now, they only offered NOAA products,” stated Captain Henry Marx, president and founder of Landfall. “Because of the delay implementing the POD service with NGA charts, for the last year, if you wanted a chart of Bermuda or Gibraltar we had to sell you a British Admiralty chart at more than twice the price. Now that we have NGA charts available again, we can pass the savings to our customers.”
Ron Walz, president of OceanGrafix adds, “We are pleased to bring NGA charts back to the marketplace. Commercial and recreational boaters alike recognize the importance of keeping paper charts onboard, and NGA charts provide them with a cost-effective option for doing so.”
POD charts will be made available on water-resistant paper or laminated.
