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Old 04-28-2011, 07:12 PM   #10
Doc
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Join Date: Oct 2007
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RE: Key West to Mexico

We left Isla Mejures in the morning on a 58' Viking sportfish that belonged to a friend. He had a captain and a mate both of whom were great fish cathers but crappy navigators. You have to make a sort of arc around the Cuban coast to get to Key West. We took turns single handing the watch all night long. When I went up to relieve the captain at midnight I could see lights on the shore. I asked if he was on the rhumb line that I had plotted. He said "The What?"

Turns out that everytime he felt like it he reset the Key West waypoint...from where the boat was at the time. I pointed out that we may have drifted off coarse and that every time he reset the waypoint we were starting from a different place. For example if we had drifted to a point where there was now a large rock (or Cuba) in our path we would head directly to the waypoint regardless if we had to pass through the rock to get there.

He finally went to bed and I changed course back to the original rhumb line which was several miles north of where we were when I took over.

We made it in the afternoon the next day. 10 kts all the way.
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