Curtis I. C-Map Max style, and a Panbo apology
While I’m back on the subject of charts, Curtis Island in particular, I want to correct an error I made last Winter. That’s when I made note of how my borrowed C-Map Max card seemed to have lost track of Camden’s largest aid to navigation, the Curtis I. light. It was confusing, as I noted, but it turns out that I wasn’t completely wrong; the early versions of Max had an overly aggressive decluttering algorythm that could sometimes declutter something as important as that light. However, what I did not understand was that C-Map had discovered and fixed the problem quite rapidly. The reason I didn’t know about the fix was that I had a card that didn’t come through normal channels, plus I didn’t call C-Map to ask. And there, friends, is one weakness of Panbo. I kind of shoot from the hip on this blog. When I write a magazine article I have the time to make calls and check facts, but here I’m hoping that readers will notify me of mistakes and I’ll correct them online. Please feel free to note those mistakes, and hopefully I’ll correct them faster than this one! At any rate, C-Map’s Max card not only shows the Curtis Island Light at every appropriate zoom level, it also has a picture of it.
I think the entire Camden/Curtis Island chart issue was good. It made several navigation software developers look at their applications and make several improvements. In our case we offered a corrected verison of our MacENC within the week of your discoveries. So thank you.