All our yesterdays

I remember Mum dad me & a dog on a Liz 23, Mum cooking dinner after a wet passage up the wallet. For pudding we had a heinz jam sponge pudding that was cooked in the tin by boiling it in water for a while. She opened the wrong end & a jet of boiling hot strawberry jam covered the cabin roof. So we had sponge with whatever jam we could scrape of the deckhead with our spoons.
 
We used to sail from Barbados to (and from) the other islands in the Eastern Caribbean in the 70's / early 80's with no nav equipment at all - for depth we looked over the side, and speed was estimated by the bubbles in the wake. A simple transistor radio would give a reasonably good DF signal. And if all else failed, and we were heading east to Barbados, then we could always resort to following the LIAT aeroplanes......
It was a revelation when sat-navs were introduced - I remember buying a Navstar sat-nav (I think it was a 2000S?) at SBS in 1988 for the boat that my folks had then - it got a fix about every 20 minutes or so, with an accuracy of perhaps a few miles, it cost GBP 500 then, and we thought it was quite amazing.
 
fisherman said:
The Decca Yacht Nav was £1800 in 1983, converted decca to lat/long.
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More than a few fisherfolk had recorded sets of Decca co-ordinates that the guarded jealously, for there were the fish. Also, rather often, there also were the wrecks with - sometimes - cargoes worth diving for. One could pay the Hydro Office for a printout of the known/suspected wrecks in a designated area, cross-match with a friendly trawlerman's 'hotspots', then take a local diving club right there. All before GPS took the fun out of it, of course.....
 
oldharry said:
50+ years I thnk the thing I miss most is having the stamina to stand a lumpy 30 hour passage in a (very) small boat. That and the thrill of confirming the land appearing ahead really is where you wanted to be!. GPS takes al the guess work out (thank goodness!).
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I used to stay up all night, did it on the first trip to Ireland when the kids were small. Hand helmed for 14 hrs. Cant do it now, I feel really bad If I cant get my head down when body says so. Good job the Admiral likes night sailing.
 
We still work in Decca lanes, simply because that's what everyone had since it was invented, to take the invasion fleet to Normandy. It was basically a counting machine, it had to be given the starting point, then counted as you crossed the 'ripples' of the signals emanating from three stations. Down here red lanes are about 0.7 nm, green three to the nm, you got tenths and hundredths. A trawler could relatively easily follow a lane as all you had was three dials that gave a readout of number plus decimals every ?thirty? seconds, until the mk 21 came in with a paper roll going up and down, and a pen going side to side. Course, it all went bosoms elevated each dawn and dusk. You can still buy a GPS with decca readout, Koden KGP 913 for instance. Trawlers have tows that usually follow decca lanes, but they all had to make a slight adjustment when decca was turned off in 1996 or so. Dedicated software like Trax is gradually superceding decca, but we still talk in decca when relaying positions, even with the French boats. Lat/long would be much easier.
 
My neighbour flew fixed wing from Culdrose, transporting stuff and people. I showed him the new GPS in 1985 or so, he spluttered a bit, he still had the old decca which apart from a fairly large readout unit, had other equipment weighing about 200lbs, a considerable effect on capacity.
 
Jumbleduck,

a Test Pilot I knew - certainly NOT JF - was one of the most £ focussed blokes I ever met, so had a top of the range fishing boat to take out charter parties of foreign pilots and dignitaries on fishing trips; nb this was from Brighton so not quite the same as Hemingway and Marlins stuff.

He told me the Decca contemporary Loran had been invented by the Germans then later converted to use by the allies, like Decca requiring fancy bendy charts, still used by UK fishing boats to the 1980's before a thoughtful god gave us Satnav then GPS - I think the intermediate RDF was just Lucifer showing his sense of humour. :)
 
Seajet said:
He told me the Decca contemporary Loran had been invented by the Germans..... I think the intermediate RDF was just Lucifer showing his sense of humour. :)
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They also invented Consol, a 'hyperbolic radio navaid' and a predecessor to their embryo Decca. They used that mid range MF radio navaid for their U-boats' navigation. it was such a good, cheap system we were still using it well into the 70s. I still have one of their specially-overprinted charts kicking around, just in case.... ;)
 
People on here who grew up with GPS simply haven't lived unless they've known the delights of being knackered, cold and wet mid - Channel waving a Seafix RDF around in ' Kawi ' mode. :)
 
RDF was a inventio0n fo the devil - totally so. When i sailed regualrlyin cardigan bay there were only two Beacons, one down near Milfiord Haven so a bit weak, and directionally messed up by the high ground of the Prescelly Mountains. The other was up at Holyhead. So no chance of a cocked hat, and in the cenytre of the Bay you were virtually on a straight line between the two. Out there once in poor vis heading from Abersoch to Fishguard, my DR said I was pretty well where I should be. But RDF which was the new toy in those days, and whose quirks were not well known, to me anyway told me I was off course and closing with the rockbound coast round Aberporth. Not a good place tobe in poor vis, so I altered course to accord with the nice shiny new RDF set.. Bad mistake, only retrieved because the vis lifted enogh for me to realise I was 10 miles off Fishguard heading for the S Atlantic! I never trusted it again, and always followed my own DR if there was any doubt. It was gratifying that when there was a difference of opinion, my DR was more accurate than RDF.

Even when we switched to Decca, which genrally was a lot more accurate, it was always at the back of my mind that my set would always without fail put me in Newport High street on the IoW when I was in the vicinity of Nab Tower.

Old habits die hard, and I usually keep my position by DR, then confirm it with GPS. But I have yet to disagree with the GPS in the way I used to with the older systems. Except when the Americans block it in most of the central Solent when one of their giant Carriers visits Portsmouth.
 
Old Harry,

I'm sure Lucifer ( as in the decent English bloke in the modern series which must really wind up the bible belt ) :) invented RDF just for a laugh.

Although it was completely against the instructions, I found the best way of finding Guernsey in fog was to take a clue from the Islanders coming to land in then use the RDF for the aero beacon ( nb keeping an eye on the chart, depthsounder and compass DR for the rocks ) :encouragement:
 
Seajet said:
the best way of finding Guernsey in fog was to take a clue from the Islanders coming to land in then use the RDF for the aero beacon
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Given that aircraft - e.g. BN Islanders - usually approach the runway from the east, as the prevailing wind is from the western sector, that suggests one is bobbing around in fog somewhere among the rocks, reefs and fast swirly tides south of Jethou..... Not a place I'd wish to be wandering around without a clue. IMHO that's exactly what an anchor is for.
 
I did my first trip to Holland in a Vivacity and fairly boisterous conditions. The skipper was asleep and I couldn't get an RDF fix, and wasn't sure if we were North or South of Ijmuiden. I saw aeroplanes landing in the far distance. So I decided that must be Schipol, so head for them, we'll be right, and it worked!
A bit later I wondered, what if they were landing at Rotterdam?
 
Much of this backs up my contention that we should keep a DR log as well especially in fog + close to land, record GPS pos every half hour or so, for when it goes wrong.

I was asked for a position by a yacht 3nm SE of the Lizard, in fog, he was from S Ireland for Falmouth and had seen nothing most of the way. He was quite pleased.
 
fisherman said:
The Decca Yacht Nav was £1800 in 1983, converted decca to lat/long.
Click to expand...

In 1987 I decreed that we would no longer be buying Decca charts which were costing us £60K a year and told Masters to get down to the yacht chandlers in their next civilised port and buy a Decca Yacht Navigator instead. Nine years later I saw my last Decca set in use in the wheelhouse of an RN warship.
 
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