backup plotters

[captainslarty]

Re: drifting now...

The old methods are well, just old, nowadays, and a lot of hype is used sometimes re reliability.
These days there is absulutely no reason NOT to use all electronic navigation if you have redundancy AND the skills to fix the issues that may arise - and of course, alternative charging systems.

 

[john_morris_uk]

Re: drifting now...

I don't have a problem with using electronic systems for navigation. In fact I use them all the time. I don't happen to use a plotter, but I do use a GPS. That's not the point.

I get worried when people are so reliant on them that they have layers of redundancy built in to make sure that they think that they can never be challenged by a paper chart, a log compass and tide tables. Why the paranoia with some people? Modern electronics are very reliable, but should you really be at sea if you are frightened by the thought of the electronics giving up the ghost?

Surely having another means of navigation is just good seamanship even if you use the electronics 99.9% of the time.

 

[Marsupial]

Re: drifting now...

Yes you're right, but I find it very difficult to steer a reliable course towing the space shuttle.

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

and try as a we might towing with the engine on full chat and all the sails up, Dungeoness B is still firmly attached to the land so I need a lighter alternative charging device or an even longer shore power cable, not to mention the half a yard of sand I carry to manufacture new chips as and when they fail.

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

SWIMBO reckons a chart case is lighter than the multihead mill we have in the galley to make the moulds for the plotter cases but naaa I'll get rid of the plastic extruding machine before I part with THAT!

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif


Had some difficulty creating a dust free environment to repair hard disks till we realised that we could launch the space shuttle and the astronaughts could carry out the repair while on a space walk in between repairing GPS satalites.

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

we know how to sail!!!!!!!

 

[ctelfer38]

Oh dear!! Your poll and some of the responses ( and lots of other threads on these forums ) does confirm what I fear. That is that we are gradually becoming enslaved by our technology. I speak as someone who uses all of it - ashore as well as afloat - but I reserve the right to regret the trend just a bit! Are we being enslaved by this forum and the technology that runs it? - I am off to have a lie down. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Urm.....

OK..... interesting responses....

It strikes me that most of the respondees are 'old salts' who have sailed for long enough to have terrorised the seven seas long before the advent of the dear old GPS, let alone the plotter..... I count myself amongst that group...

My concern is still for a while in the future, and that is when the 'average owner' (whatever that is) has never experienced sailing without electronics, and for whom DR and EP's are just something that was experienced in a classroom 20years ago, and have never been used in anger.....

But it is still interesting that a substantial percentage of people on here are sufficiently attached to electronic navigation that they have extensive redundancy..... hard to argue as a bad thing, but perhaps worrying for a future sailing generation.....

 

[WindFinder]

[ QUOTE ]
I do carry a sextant and tables as well, which is a bit over the top for the channel...)

[/ QUOTE ]

Over the top? Are you kidding? It's totally inadequate. It's far more vulnerable to breakage than a £60 waterproof GPS from Millets and half the time it's cloudy and there's nothing to get a fix on at all.

The biggest joke is that you seem to be claiming your sextant is not electronic yet since quartz watches you will almost certainly be relying on an electronic watch to tell the time. Unless you are going to claim that a clockwork watch is more reliable?

 

[WindFinder]

[ QUOTE ]
It strikes me that most of the respondees are 'old salts' who have sailed for long enough to have terrorised the seven seas long before the advent of the dear old GPS, let alone the plotter..... I count myself amongst that group...


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not that old but I sailed in the Decca days and found it far worse than GPS in every way. And so expensive loads of people didn't even bother.

GPS is so good that a good Landfall is considered almost inevitable and no longer even remarked upon!

GPS rocks. If you'd told yachtsmen before WW2 that they could buy on the high street a device giving a (usually) cast Iron accurate position updated in real time for the price of a pub dinner for 2 they'd have snapped it up.

The chart issues is slightly different to GPS. You could argue about your preferred chart format forever. I like paper charts purely because of the large 'screen size', but then if I had to buy worldwide charts I doubt I could even afford all paper.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

I don't disagree.... give me the choice of having or not having GPS and I know which i'd choose!.... I was merely making the point that in a few years time, there will be a generation of sailors who have never approached a coast desperately watching for something to get a fix from....... and when their electronics fail, it will be such an alien experience that i'm not sure they'll know how to deal with it!

 

[WindFinder]

[ QUOTE ]
when their electronics fail, it will be such an alien experience that i'm not sure they'll know how to deal with it!

[/ QUOTE ]

Why? It's not rocket science.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

nope.... its not rocket science because many of us have used the techniques extensively over the years..... but if you've never had to work your way into a coastline without absolute certainty before, it would I imagine be quite frightening...... Don't you remember the first time you went out of sight of land on DR?.... the relief of getting a proper fix again was quite a thing...... this would have been on the back of having learned to trust your navigation over time doing coastal nav..... but imagine if that experience was the first time you'd ever navigated traditionally?......

Maybe i'm overplaying it (a little bit intentionally), but just trying to make a point...

 

[WindFinder]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't you remember the first time you went out of sight of land on DR?.... the relief of getting a proper fix again was quite a thing...... ...but imagine if that experience was the first time you'd ever navigated traditionally?......Maybe i'm overplaying it (a little bit intentionally), but just trying to make a point...

[/ QUOTE ]

I do think you might be overstating the difficulty a bit - the problems I recall were always far more visibility related than skill related. Where there are visible landmarks, being unable to use then to work out where you are would require mental slowness that borders on disability IMHO even if you'd never even seen a boat.

I can see what you're saying though, I set off P'mth to Poole the other week, I felt I didn't need the GPS on for that trip and left it off. The viz closed in and in minutes I came over all nervous and went down to turn it (and the AIS) on. We've become addicted to knowing exactly where we are these days in a way we simply didn't used to be in the 'good/bad old days'.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Exactly....

You say it'd show mental slowness to not work out where you were.... but if you're not used to using light characteristics to confirm a light source, haven't allowed for variation in 20 years (do I add or subtract that westerly variation?), and can't remember when the compass was last swung (if you even know what that means), then it might be harder than you or I would perhaps expect to be anywhere approaching accurate....

I remember setting out from Plymouth to the Channel Islands with nothing but a chart a pencil and a compass, and getting half way across and not being able to see the bow....

We, as usual, made it quite safely into St Peter Port...

I am sure that nowadays, without my GPS crutch, i'd be a darned site more nervous than I was in those days....

 

[WindFinder]

[ QUOTE ]
but if you're not used to using light characteristics to confirm a light source, haven't allowed for variation in 20 years (do I add or subtract that westerly variation?), and can't remember when the compass was last swung (if you even know what that means), then it might be harder than you or I would perhaps expect to be anywhere approaching accurate....

[/ QUOTE ]

Well yeah, but how accurate do you really have to be? We used to go into all sorts of places and hardly ever needed to take bearings - just keep Barfleur well on the left, keep the IOW to the right. Thinking about it how often do you really look at the GPS when there's plenty of land around, if you've checked the chart to ensure the coast is clean just keeping well off and/or following contours is perfectly adequate? It's really a poor viz/no land nearby tool.

[ QUOTE ]
I am sure that nowadays, without my GPS crutch, i'd be a darned site more nervous than I was in those days....

[/ QUOTE ]

Totally agree with you there. Being unaware of your exact position used to be normal, now it's a source of unease! I saw an old logbook recently - the guy didn't bother recording the minutes! He felt granularity of 60miles was enough for him, and it was!

 

[john_morris_uk]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I do carry a sextant and tables as well, which is a bit over the top for the channel...)

[/ QUOTE ]

Over the top? Are you kidding? It's totally inadequate. It's far more vulnerable to breakage than a £60 waterproof GPS from Millets and half the time it's cloudy and there's nothing to get a fix on at all.

The biggest joke is that you seem to be claiming your sextant is not electronic yet since quartz watches you will almost certainly be relying on an electronic watch to tell the time. Unless you are going to claim that a clockwork watch is more reliable?

[/ QUOTE ]I am somewhat bemused by your reply on several counts.

Firstly one of my chronometers is a wind up mechanical one. It is very reliable and its rate is predictable and accurate.

Secondly because the reason I said a sextant is over the top for navigation without electronics is because I really think that it is. You don't need to find your latitude by midday sun or your longtitude by running on that latitude and crossing it with a sun sight a few hours later in the channel, because by a few hours later you've hopefully got some land in sight again.

Yeasr ago I used to sail all round the channel with no Decca or GPS. It was interesting and sometimes worrying not knowing exactly where you were and I know the skills are probably a little rusty now, but I think I could still do it.

Its not the existence of £60 GPS's that worries me, its peoples total reliance on them.

 

[BrendanS]

[ QUOTE ]
Its not the existence of £60 GPS's that worries me, its peoples total reliance on them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are maybe overplaying the reliance. I have a plotter and backup gps, but am in no way reliant on them. I've been navigating by chart/map since I was 10, and have not lost those skills, and many I know are exactly the same. The convenience of a plotter or gps is very handy, but if they were taken away tomorrow, I wouldn't worry about it, I'd just have to work a bit harder at navigation.

 

[WindFinder]

[ QUOTE ]
Its not the existence of £60 GPS's that worries me, its peoples total reliance on them.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL! Wheras relying on wind up clock and a visible sky for your position is not worrying?

Sextants are not over the top compared to GPS they are completely ineffective!

 

[Anonymous]

[ QUOTE ]
LOL! Wheras relying on wind up clock and a visible sky for your position is not worrying? Sextants are not over the top compared to GPS they are completely ineffective!

[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmmm.... not quite the case. A sextant is hugely useful in determining your position when in sight of land by measuring included angles.

Besides, the entire GPS system could be turned off at any time. OK, the probability of that happening to any of us must be very small but the fact that the entire GPS system has never gone down does not mean that it never WILL go down.

I would feel far more comfortable in the hands of a sailor who has (and uses from time to time) a sextant and who carries a simple Tescos Value GPS for lat/long than with the sailor, untrained in basic marine navigation, who has never had to navigate any distance without GPS and who has three plotters, two handheld GPSs, a drawer full of batteries and a UPS supply to the equipment. The latter looks very smart but I fear that it is an accident waiting to happen.

People should learn the basics and that includes being completely comfortable with how to lay off a course using pencil, ruler, protractor, dividers/compasses, tide tables and some kind of tidal atlas - and, of course, a paper chart. I would suggest to anyone who cannot do it that they buy a suitable book - Dayskipper covers all the basics you need - and learn how to do it....or if you find that difficult, take a class and make some new friends at the same time.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

I'd express my long term concerns slightly differently Lemain.... I think most people will continue to learn traditional navigation... its just that they'll never use it.... why would you if you were new to sailing today?... and then when they do need to use it, they'll have either forgotten how to do it, or will remember, but find the uncertainty very very discomforting!

 

[moody1]

As with most polls the options are very limiting and cannot cover many set-ups.
For example we carry hubbnies Notebook for him to be able to still run his company while afloat. This does have chart plotting on it, but is rarely switched on. So I have discounted it. We carry two basic Hand GPS machines to sit in reserve should they be needed. Both of those and the main plotter have 12v supply cables so can run of the portable emergency power pack. The hh's of course also can use aa batterys.
We looked at aa battery life and felt that the power pack was a good idea. Portable, reasonable life which is far longer than aa's.

 

[Haven't-a-Clue]

LeMain, which book would you reccommend and by the way, what can I use to mark an Admiralty Toughchart that will wipe off afterwards and where can I get such a thing? Sorry to ask, but I don't know. Many thanks.