Do you use Waypoints.

I don't have a plotter. If I did I might find I was more inclined to use waypoints. While my boat does have a GPS and most likely the ability to impute waypoints.
I still use the pencil and chart. The only time I really used the GPS was offshore.

For me figuring out a position in latitude and longitude then imputing it into the magic box. Is just an additional step I don’t find I need? Though there are some ideas here I might try. The ETA's on longer passages might be worth the trouble.

It is odd though. My Chapman is a recent edition (64th 2003) and they are not mentioned. May Danton’s a little older but still recent. I know what they are. They have been around a long time. I may not choose to use. Yet we are all quite familiar with the term.
Leaves me wondering if other well-known textbooks recognize the term.

Of course I have not yet check the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Not grumpy today.:)
 
Uricanejack said:
Of course I have not yet check the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Not grumpy today.:)
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Here you are:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/waypoint


I use them all the time. They are useful for fairway marks when approaching harbours, etc. On passages a glance at the track and the VMG shows me which is the most favourable tack and then to decide when and where to tack.

Re traditional charts, the position on the GPS plotter is transferred every hour or so to the paper version, which incidentally is a legal requirement to have on board.
 
There is no legal requirement for a private sailing vessel to carry charts or anything else for that matter.
PuffTheMagicDragon said:
Here you are:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/waypoint


I use them all the time. They are useful for fairway marks when approaching harbours, etc. On passages a glance at the track and the VMG shows me which is the most favourable tack and then to decide when and where to tack.

Re traditional charts, the position on the GPS plotter is transferred every hour or so to the paper version, which incidentally is a legal requirement to have on board.
Click to expand...
 
ghostlymoron said:
There is no legal requirement for a private sailing vessel to carry charts or anything else for that matter.
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In my country there is if you are moving outside of territorial waters (and therefore registered as a 'ship' with the national ships registry). It makes sense not to rely solely on the GPS, convenient as that may be.
 
PuffTheMagicDragon said:
Here you are:

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/waypoint


I use them all the time. They are useful for fairway marks when approaching harbours, etc. On passages a glance at the track and the VMG shows me which is the most favourable tack and then to decide when and where to tack.

Re traditional charts, the position on the GPS plotter is transferred every hour or so to the paper version, which incidentally is a legal requirement to have on board.
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Checked it out thanks.
A stopping point on a journey. The example Scandinavia to Byzantium. The terms been around a bit longer than. I thought.:)

Charts are a legal requirement where I sail. Are they in the UK.
Would the official Admiralty electronic chart on an approved plotter not be suficent. For legal purpose.
Or is a hard back up still required.
 
ghostlymoron said:
There is no legal requirement for a private sailing vessel to carry charts or anything else for that matter.
Click to expand...

It is a legal requirement to have a passage plan & if you have no access to tides, course to take etc you would effectively be be breaking the law. Of course you could claim you have charts & tide tables, weather reports etc at home & have prepared the plan prior to departure but i am not convinced that would hold water at an inquest.
Ie you could not demonstrate how you could cope with unforseen eventualities without the information at hand.
If one was on a simple cruise round the bay , then ok but on a trip from port to port it would be different
 
Scotty_Tradewind said:
I thought that except for Col reg's the only other major requirement was to keep a log and to have the vhf on ch16 if you have one and it's working......
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I used to think it was a condition of the VHF license to listen on 16 when under way, but last time this came up I checked and it actually isn't. I can't think of any other legislation applicable to leisure vessels that would make it so. So unless you know better, I don't think there actually is any such requirement (though it is of course a good idea).

I'm fairly confident there's no requirement for a leisure vessel to keep a log. Again, if anyone can point to the relevant legislation I'd be interested (it's all online at http://www.legislation.gov.uk )

ColRegs are indeed law, via the Merchant Shipping (Distress Signals and Prevention of Collisions) Regulations 1996.

Uricanejack said:
Charts are a legal requirement where I sail. Are they in the UK.
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Not for leisure vessels.

Pete
 
I use waypoints and routes all the time, that is when I am travelling. They are the result of passage planning, which you have to do anyway, especially when sailing in unfamiliar waters. When I'm just out for a daysail out of my homeport, the plotter will be on standby, just in case the fog comes down and I need the waypoint to find the entrance, which did happen only a few weeks ago.
However my autopilot is deliberately not networked with the plotter. All course changes have to be made by someone who will hopefully have thought about what they're doing.
 
Yes we use them but not draw a full course, wind tide and other factors means sailing to the wind and coditions rather than the shortest line.

The thing I am always on the lookout for the other bloke who has the X in the same spot on his plotter.

Can be quite a hazard in busy waterways.

Good luck and fair winds. :)
 
westhinder said:
I use waypoints and routes all the time, that is when I am travelling. They are the result of passage planning, which you have to do anyway, especially when sailing in unfamiliar waters. When I'm just out for a daysail out of my homeport, the plotter will be on standby, just in case the fog comes down and I need the waypoint to find the entrance, which did happen only a few weeks ago.
However my autopilot is deliberately not networked with the plotter. All course changes have to be made by someone who will hopefully have thought about what they're doing.
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Although there may be exceptions, usually a manual input is needed each time the vessel reaches a waypoint alarm zone. It is not possible on my boat to set a route and settle down in a bunk to sleep through the voyage. There are advantages in coastal cruising to setting the boat to follow a track rather than just a compass course.
 
prv said:
But that's the point - some people on the plotter thread were implying that they always pre-plan a route in precise detail, enter every course change as a waypoint and link them together into a route, and then play join-the-dots sailing along the straight line from one waypoint to the next. That doesn't sound like saving time and effort or the easy way to do anything.

Pete
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That is precisely what I do and have been doing for many years. I plot a safe course pretty much wherever we are going, don't keep to it precisely but we always know which way to go if in doubt. I think I have 1000 waypoints in the plotter, so setting up a route rarely requires me to enter a new one, although doing so takes well under a minute.
 
prv said:
ColRegs are indeed law, via the Merchant Shipping (Distress Signals and Prevention of Collisions) Regulations 1996.



Not for leisure vessels.

Pete
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I think that is where the difference lies between countries. For example, in my country (Malta) it is illegal for a vessel to venture outside of territorial waters (12 NM) unless she is registered under the Register of Shipping and, therefore, wearing the Valletta flag. This means that my boat, a 10metre sailing vessel is considered, for legal purposes, as a 'ship' and is an extension of the Republic. In the case of vessels that carry fare-paying passengers or cargo for commercial purposes there are other specific regulations and requirements. I suppose that, by default, boats like mine would be 'leisure' vessels but this does not exonerate them from the basic requirements.

Other countries, for example Italy, require the vessel to have a liferaft/s that can carry all of the persons that the vessel can carry. My boat used to be under the Italian flag and was required to have a liferaft capacity of 8 persons (being 6 berths plus an assumed 2 others on deck). Fortunately Maltese law does not require this and so I got rid of the 8-person raft, an object that I could hardly lift off the floor let alone deploy it.

It is my belief that, one day, the people in Brussels will require legislation that will apply to all Member States in the EU. I fervently hope that this will be well after my time.
 
sailorman said:
X tide is X tide & makes + 10 mile difference on a X channel trip
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yes and i place a waypoint at the entrance to say cherbourg - so apart from me getting where i want it has no effect on the tide
in advance i work out a course to steer which will take into account the total tidal offsets for the trip and it everything works out to my calculations i arrive at the waypoint
so as i said all depends on where you put the waypoints - if i had also placed 1 at mid channel i would be needlessly battling the tide all the way and who in their right mind would want to do that - so what is the problem with waypoints it is only a name for a particular point on a chart that you either want to navigate too or via - it don't matter how you do the navigation or what you call it we ALL use those points
 
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