The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides the public with free downloads of U.S. nautical charts, covering coastal areas and the Great Lakes. NOAA charts are updated periodically and include Notice to Mariners corrections.
NOAA charts are available in several formats:
Raster Navigational Charts (RNC), Electronic Navigational Charts (ENC) require third party electronic charting software for use.
NOAA BookletCharts™ (Experimental) are another option for mariners. These low resolution charts are divided into page-sized, printable sections.
**2020 Update**
According to the NOAA Office of Coast Survey, production will ultimately be shut down for all raster chart products and services associated with traditional NOAA paper nautical charts, including:
- Print-on-demand (POD) paper nautical charts
- Full-size chart PDFs
- NOAA raster navigational charts (NOAA RNC®)
- BookletChart™ PDFs
- NOAA RNC tile service
- Online RNC viewer
NOAA expects the cancellation of these product and services to start in mid to late 2020 and be completed by January 2025.
For more information and to download free NOAA charts, visit www.nauticalcharts.gov/