I am glad to announce that I have been accepted as a team member in OpenSeaMap’s attempt in making a more nautical friendly base map. We are still just starting the process, but at least it is a start.

The team at the moment is myself, Dominik, who does the testing with mod_tile, and Yohan, who for some time have been developing a houseboating site.

The three of us have the common goal of making a base map where typical land features are toned down, or maybe even completely neglected, in favour of enhancing the viewability of features that have an importance on nautical navigation.

I will use my place on the team to get the base layer as much influenced on INT-1 symbols as possible, though we might do some priorities on the side of INT-1.

Since we are just about to start off, it is still too early to say anything about actual results yet. Also, it has to be noted that there are a faction within OpenSeaMap that want a combined nautical and land map. My message to them is to continue to use the Mapnik base map, but as mentioned, we are too early in the process to know what will be the outcome of this yet.