View Single Post
Old 05-11-2015, 02:43 PM   #77
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
City: -
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
Quote:
Originally Posted by psneeld View Post
Set and drift isn't about being dumb...it's about accuracy. Guessing set/drift in DR isn't good enough.

If not done consistently and courses altered to know places to get a fix....good luck.

.
Again, you're telling me what I already know and have known for decades. We don't navigate using plotted courses and corrections on charts because it's way too easy to simply follow the lines and arrows on the screen. But we know how to follow a plotted course on a chart and accurately calculate the corrections because we have both a) done if for a long, long time in the air, and b) have learned to do it and practice it just for fun periodically on the water.

Reading this thread has been very entertaining. I say entertaining because of the way navigtation is being talked about like it's some kind of super rocket science. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

The reality is that navigating a boat from A to B is about the simplest, easiest process on the planet. You are here, you want to go there, you figure out a course from here to there on which you will hit nothing but water, you figure out the headings to hold on each leg, you get current (and wind if it's relevant) information and dial it in with your speed to get the heading that has to held on each leg or portion of each leg if it's a long one that will be influenced by several currents along the way, and that's it. Maintain the headings and the speed and you're done. You get to Point B every time. One reason it's so dead easy is that the stuff you're navigating around doesn't move while you're navigating around it.

As someone earlier in this thread said, man has been navigating around on this planet for a bazillion years. For example Capt. Vancouver got himself from England to Puget Sound and then found England again when he went home using tools that a competent craftsman could make in his garage with the probable exception of the clock.

The process is way, way easier to do today, but it's no different. It's still getting from A to B to C without hitting anything but water. And doing this, be it with charts or a plotter, is very, very easy.

In fact, it is FAR more difficult, and requires FAR more precision and decision making and calculations-- decisions and calculations that have to be made almost instantly in many cases, some of which could have fatal results--- driving to work and back every day.

So this portrayal of navigating a boat around as some sort of super challenging, difficult process is, to me, laughable, frankly.

And don't tell me about the time when one had to steer the boat and hold a heading in 50 foot waves and 100 knots winds. That's not describing the havigation process. That's desribing the conditions one was in while navigating the boat. The navigation process was still the same old, basic "go from A to B without hitting anything" it's been for bloody forever.

So when I see posts talking about the difficulty of navigating with charts, or the wonders of navigating by electronics, I'm not impressed. They're both dead easy, be it poking around the islands here or out in the middle of the Pacific.

I had a girlfriend in Hawaii who not long after I met her asked me how I navigated the planes I flew between the islands. She'd never been in a small plane and of course had never been on the flight deck of an airliner, so knew nothing about flying or navigation. So I told her I'd show her. Took her on a date to Kona on the Big Island (we were on Oahu). Fairly long flight, multiple legs, lots of waypoints (Flight Following was mandatory in Hawaii back then so even if you flew VMC you still had to fly between specific waypoints on each island and report in when you got to them).

Before we left I explained the basics of navigation and how the wind affects the plane and all that. Back then the "high tec" navaid for aircraft was VOR. Explained to her the basics of how it worked, what the display was showing, and how to hold a course. This is all really simple stuff and took only a few minutes to run though.

We took off, and once at altitude I told her what the basic flight controls did and let her fly. It took her awhile to get used to the reaction of the plane, but once she did she flew the entire flight, kept the needle centered pretty darn well the whole time, changed course at the waypoints, picked up the new courses, all with minimal input from me. In the strong tradewinds the fact that the plane often wasn't going in the direction it was pointed didn't phase her a bit once she'd been told the concept.

The point is, the concepts in navigation are very, very easy to comprehend and learn. Frankly, my wife and I regard navigation as about the easiest task in the overall operation of our boats. I'm not going to call it a no-brainer, but it's pretty darn close.

(The other thing my example illustrates is how easy it is to fly a plane. )
Marin is offline   Reply With Quote