Does anyone still sail without a chart plotter?

[westernman]

Far too close. Make it 200m. If it's anything like St Albans Head on a blustery day, 12,000m

Or at least 1/4 of an inch.

On the best chart you have.

 

[Ravi]

OP - I suspect that you were just poking your honey coated stick into the YBW forum ant nest when you made your original post. Maybe you thought that innocently asking for anchor purchase advice was too much like shooting fish in a barrel. Perhaps you thought that the forum carnage would be too brutal and violent if you asked .... "Was my mate
right when he said that "the number of hulls on the boat that you buy is proportionate to the buyer's IQ"?.

Yet, with only one baited hook, you have managed to catch twelve pages of agonised forum posts on the subject of 'electronica vs. historica'.

The strange thing is that the whole thread seems to have been marvellously civilised and amicable. There is an unprecedented air of mutual respect and rationality in the discussion. How has this come about in the forum's Tweed vs Lycra sailing fraternity? Is this some sort of strange lock-down zen aberration?

It is almost as if nobody is willing to lie down on their (full size) chart table and stab themselves through the heart with their (slightly bent) school dividers and bleed to death on their paper charts to protect their domain against the threat of raster charts creeping onboard.

And similarly, people who have half a dozen different tablets, laptops and phones on board running different chart software on IOS, android and windows are happy to admit that having the extra weight of a 2B pencil and a piece of paper probably won't sink their high powered racing machine.

Has the pandemic brought universal yachting harmony. Has it brought the Age of Aquarius for navigators?

Are you the one to bring everyone together?

Or are you just a very naughty boy?

 

[CAPTAIN FANTASTIC]

OP - I suspect that you were just poking your honey coated stick into the YBW forum ant nest when you made your original post. Maybe you thought that innocently asking for anchor purchase advice was too much like shooting fish in a barrel. Perhaps you thought that the forum carnage would be too brutal and violent if you asked .... "Was my mate
right when he said that "the number of hulls on the boat that you buy is proportionate to the buyer's IQ"?.

Yet, with only one baited hook, you have managed to catch twelve pages of agonised forum posts on the subject of 'electronica vs. historica'.

The strange thing is that the whole thread seems to have been marvellously civilised and amicable. There is an unprecedented air of mutual respect and rationality in the discussion. How has this come about in the forum's Tweed vs Lycra sailing fraternity? Is this some sort of strange lock-down zen aberration?

It is almost as if nobody is willing to lie down on their (full size) chart table and stab themselves through the heart with their (slightly bent) school dividers and bleed to death on their paper charts to protect their domain against the threat of raster charts creeping onboard.

And similarly, people who have half a dozen different tablets, laptops and phones on board running different chart software on IOS, android and windows are happy to admit that having the extra weight of a 2B pencil and a piece of paper probably won't sink their high powered racing machine.

Has the pandemic brought universal yachting harmony. Has it brought the Age of Aquarius for navigators?

Are you the one to bring everyone together?

Or are you just a very naughty boy?,

Like many of us here, you must be really bored too, to write this script......but I like it

 

[Daydream believer]

It is almost as if nobody is willing to lie down on their (full size) chart table and stab themselves through the heart with their (slightly bent) school dividers and bleed to death on their paper charts to protect their domain against the threat of raster charts creeping onboard.

And similarly, people who have half a dozen different tablets, laptops and phones on board running different chart software on IOS, android and windows are happy to admit that having the extra weight of a 2B pencil and a piece of paper probably won't sink their high powered racing machine.
Or are you just a very naughty boy?

Just to put you right here
I use a proper Blundell Harling single handed brass & stainless steel navigators dividers. Nothing so crude as school dividers. I bought a box of 4 B pencils some years back when I had the chance. I find 2B just too hard for my charts. I prefer not to gouge great gooves these works of artistic cartography. I also have managed to obtain some 4 B refills for my Stabila click pencil. Parallel rulers, plus , of course, my eraser- only used occasionally .
These are the correct items for a true navigator.
My Parker biro being saved for the log, as I prefer NOT to risk spilling ink when hard on the wind

For my Yeoman there is a set of marker pens complete with 50mm * 75mm slightly damp sponge to wipe the cover

 

[Dan Tribe]

These fancy gadgets will never replace the astrolabe and lodestone.

 

[newtothis]

These fancy gadgets will never replace the astrolabe and lodestone.

Pah, who needs to rely on all this technology. You should be able to tell where you're going by feeling the direction of the wave train and watching the star road unfold. During daylight hours the rise and set of the sun will give your a perfectly adequate sense of which way you are pointing without the need for any of these modern gadgets.

 

[westernman]

Pah, who needs to rely on all this technology. You should be able to tell where you're going by feeling the direction of the wave train and watching the star road unfold. During daylight hours the rise and set of the sun will give your a perfectly adequate sense of which way you are pointing without the need for any of these modern gadgets.

Knowing where you are is overrated.
All you really need to know is in which direction you should be pointing.

 

[Daydream believer]

Knowing where you are is overrated.
All you really need to know is in which direction you should be pointing.

Well not really.
I always though that I would know where I was when I got there. But the very first time I sailed to Ostend,(via Longsand Head) I found myself just offshore by about a .5 mile, only to be told that it was Nieuwpoort.

 

[lustyd]

Pah, who needs to rely on all this technology. You should be able to tell where you're going by feeling the direction of the wave train and watching the star road unfold. During daylight hours the rise and set of the sun will give your a perfectly adequate sense of which way you are pointing without the need for any of these modern gadgets.

That's an interesting point I'd never considered before. If one were to spend long enough navigating and paying attention, could you do away with the sextant altogether and just know where you are based on seeing the stars? They are, after all, just another visual clue to location. On a big passage eyeballing the sky might be sufficiently accurate too

 

[arc1]

That's an interesting point I'd never considered before. If one were to spend long enough navigating and paying attention, could you do away with the sextant altogether and just know where you are based on seeing the stars? They are, after all, just another visual clue to location. On a big passage eyeballing the sky might be sufficiently accurate too

Someone should give it a shot and write it up...Depart from SW UK, pick one of the Azores to aim for. Not allowed to do anything other than look at the sky, mk1 eyeball, no fancy instruments. What can ppssibly go wrong?!

 

[westernman]

Well not really.
I always though that I would know where I was when I got there. But the very first time I sailed to Ostend,(via Longsand Head) I found myself just offshore by about a .5 mile, only to be told that it was Nieuwpoort.

Nieuwpoort is nicer than Ostend.

 

[rotrax]

The late George Huxtable never had a plotter or any modern nav aids.

He made extensive voyages with others as navigator, was retained by the BBC as an early nav consultant and sailed to the French Atlantic and Channel coasts many times without any electronic kit on his own boat with his wife as crew.

He was, however, a FRIN.

Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.

I doubt I could ever be as competent........................................

 

[Daydream believer]

Nieuwpoort is nicer than Ostend.

No it is not. It is a retirement home, with a few( lots actually) art shops. Little entertainment, apart from a couple of firework displays every year.
Few old buildings. Even the restaurants are limited & not so varied as Ostende.

 

[RupertW]

Someone should give it a shot and write it up...Depart from SW UK, pick one of the Azores to aim for. Not allowed to do anything other than look at the sky, mk1 eyeball, no fancy instruments. What can ppssibly go wrong?!

I think you would be surprised how successful that would be. You’d have to assume they have all the old navigational aids apart from sextant like an accurate calibrated log and tidal and ocean current tables. Get within 50 miles of any of the group and the sky will tell you mostly where the group is. The gamble of course is a week of low cloud.

 

[Laminar Flow]

Well not really.
I always though that I would know where I was when I got there. But the very first time I sailed to Ostend,(via Longsand Head) I found myself just offshore by about a .5 mile, only to be told that it was Nieuwpoort.

I would agree that knowing where you are is critical; the real question is: when this stage of knowingness comes to be.

Sure, you can follow star transits or assemble homemade LOPs into a cocked hat the size of the Western Channel, but these methods all lack in accuracy and certainty.

The most accurate traditional navigational method is by far the Breakfast transit. It goes as such: You arrive "somewhere", late afternoon and tie up. The following morning the designated navigator goes to the next bakery to pick up fresh buns, croissants, ect and voila, there you have it, in black and white, your precise location and the bakery's name, town and street address, printed right on the bag; it even comes with oven-fresh bake goods. Painless, accurate and delicious.

 

[Dan Tribe]

Well not really.
I always though that I would know where I was when I got there. But the very first time I sailed to Ostend,(via Longsand Head) I found myself just offshore by about a .5 mile, only to be told that it was Nieuwpoort.

I think Mike Peyton was watching you. One of his cartoons shows a yacht entering between pier heads, crew on deck says "do you know what courtesy flag we need yet skip"

 

[PhillM]

Sorry, but I still don't understand. I have tried to prod my plotter with a 4B pencil but it didn't seem to make an difference. Maybe I need to wire 12V into my chart table?

 

[newtothis]

That's an interesting point I'd never considered before. If one were to spend long enough navigating and paying attention, could you do away with the sextant altogether and just know where you are based on seeing the stars? They are, after all, just another visual clue to location. On a big passage eyeballing the sky might be sufficiently accurate too

Pacific Islanders were doing long passages overnight for many centuries using exactly this technique long before the long pork showed up with charts and sextants.

 

[LONG_KEELER]

Someone should give it a shot and write it up...Depart from SW UK, pick one of the Azores to aim for. Not allowed to do anything other than look at the sky, mk1 eyeball, no fancy instruments. What can ppssibly go wrong?!

In bad weather, small boat, cloudy skies ? Most would struggle with a sextant , tables and
an atomic clock

I think I'd pick Frank Worsley to do it though ?

 

[oldgit]

Pah, who needs to rely on all this technology. You should be able to tell where you're going by feeling the direction of the wave train and watching the star road unfold. During daylight hours the rise and set of the sun will give your a perfectly adequate sense of which way you are pointing without the need for any of these modern gadgets.

Judging by the time most sailing yachts take to get anywhere, all the constellations will be unrecognisable by mid passage ?