zoidberg
Well-known member
'A long time ago on a passage far, far away'.....
.....I was asked by a friend who'd just taken delivery of a very nearly new 10m Danish trimaran to help him navigate it from The Solent to Oban, for the Scottish Islands Peaks Race. Hugely generous in many ways, he was extremely penny-pinching in others, but when he handed me a plastic folio containing a 'wet pulp' of the charts he'd used the previous year, still soaked and just a soggy mush, it was clear he rather expected meticulous me to fork out for new charts.....
I decided that was an expensive presumption too far, so turned up with my nav bag full of 'nav stuff'....and off we went. He left the actual nav to me.....
I didn't open a chart or raise a pencil ( that he saw ) all the way down SW, then round the corner, and all the way up the Irish Sea. I had a couple of Passage Plans which he saw and peered at, and a well-worn copy of NP109 NW Europe Standard Nautical Charts Catalogue which I would open at the relevant - but very small scale - page from time to time.... gaze around the horizon, tap the paper with a forefinger, plonk a 'Fix' symbol and time onto the page..... then suggest a course correction and offer an ETA for the next significant waypoint.
Of course I was right, of course he had no idea what technique I was using, and of course he had no intention of questioning my competence for he knew he'd then have to do the nav himself..... with his useless soggy charts.
He was sweating quite a bit as we passed along the Antrim coast, despite the tide-set, and even up into the Sound of Jura.... but by golly he was sweating blood as we neared the roiling entrance to The Gulf of Corrievrecken, the notorious Dhorus Mhor - and beyond, the sluicing, swirling tight rocky passage of the Sound of Luing..... which he feared.
"Are you still 'all right' with the navigation? Have you been here before?" he finally spluttered. "Yes, I'm quite happy," I replied. "I know where we are, I think" naming some of the craggy islands around. "And we're going up through there," I added, waving in a general way at the barrier of rocky islets up ahead. He wasn't reassured in the least.....
He wasn't to know, for he hadn't studied the large-scale chart in detail ( as I had ) that one could pass easily either side of Fladda with its quite conspicuous sector light, or east of Dubh Sgeir, or even west of nearby Belnahua isle..... easily, that is, with a following tide, for the stream there runs at over 7 knots at times. I didn't mention the shallow patches just to the south - he didn't 'need to know', and we had a trimaran - but he certainly 'clocked' the impressive boils, swirlies and upwellings there.
He wasn't to know I DID have the latest large-scale chart BA2326 scale 1:25000 marked-up, folded and ready but hiding in my sleeping bag with all the pilotage planned and noted in the end-papers of a couple of paperbacks I had with me. Besides which, as I told him later, I had done a V-Force style 'route study' and memorised all the necessary courses, hazards, clearing bearings, tidal info etc. 'for the whole route' - and Plans B and C. Whether he believed me or not is quite another story.
Of course we shot through, 'cork out of a bottle' style, and on we flew into Oban Bay and a mooring at the club there. He was certainly glad to get ashore....and beetled off to Nancy Black's chandlery in town, where he bought himself all the new charts he could carry!
.....I was asked by a friend who'd just taken delivery of a very nearly new 10m Danish trimaran to help him navigate it from The Solent to Oban, for the Scottish Islands Peaks Race. Hugely generous in many ways, he was extremely penny-pinching in others, but when he handed me a plastic folio containing a 'wet pulp' of the charts he'd used the previous year, still soaked and just a soggy mush, it was clear he rather expected meticulous me to fork out for new charts.....
I decided that was an expensive presumption too far, so turned up with my nav bag full of 'nav stuff'....and off we went. He left the actual nav to me.....
I didn't open a chart or raise a pencil ( that he saw ) all the way down SW, then round the corner, and all the way up the Irish Sea. I had a couple of Passage Plans which he saw and peered at, and a well-worn copy of NP109 NW Europe Standard Nautical Charts Catalogue which I would open at the relevant - but very small scale - page from time to time.... gaze around the horizon, tap the paper with a forefinger, plonk a 'Fix' symbol and time onto the page..... then suggest a course correction and offer an ETA for the next significant waypoint.
Of course I was right, of course he had no idea what technique I was using, and of course he had no intention of questioning my competence for he knew he'd then have to do the nav himself..... with his useless soggy charts.
He was sweating quite a bit as we passed along the Antrim coast, despite the tide-set, and even up into the Sound of Jura.... but by golly he was sweating blood as we neared the roiling entrance to The Gulf of Corrievrecken, the notorious Dhorus Mhor - and beyond, the sluicing, swirling tight rocky passage of the Sound of Luing..... which he feared.
"Are you still 'all right' with the navigation? Have you been here before?" he finally spluttered. "Yes, I'm quite happy," I replied. "I know where we are, I think" naming some of the craggy islands around. "And we're going up through there," I added, waving in a general way at the barrier of rocky islets up ahead. He wasn't reassured in the least.....
He wasn't to know, for he hadn't studied the large-scale chart in detail ( as I had ) that one could pass easily either side of Fladda with its quite conspicuous sector light, or east of Dubh Sgeir, or even west of nearby Belnahua isle..... easily, that is, with a following tide, for the stream there runs at over 7 knots at times. I didn't mention the shallow patches just to the south - he didn't 'need to know', and we had a trimaran - but he certainly 'clocked' the impressive boils, swirlies and upwellings there.
He wasn't to know I DID have the latest large-scale chart BA2326 scale 1:25000 marked-up, folded and ready but hiding in my sleeping bag with all the pilotage planned and noted in the end-papers of a couple of paperbacks I had with me. Besides which, as I told him later, I had done a V-Force style 'route study' and memorised all the necessary courses, hazards, clearing bearings, tidal info etc. 'for the whole route' - and Plans B and C. Whether he believed me or not is quite another story.
Of course we shot through, 'cork out of a bottle' style, and on we flew into Oban Bay and a mooring at the club there. He was certainly glad to get ashore....and beetled off to Nancy Black's chandlery in town, where he bought himself all the new charts he could carry!
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