Get your position right...

[prv]

I agree that to transmit Position followed by Range and Bearing ticks all the boxes but I can't see your problem with getting the Position. Don't all plotters have a Nav page which gives Lat and Long in big bold numbers?

He’s talking about receiving someone else’s position, not transmitting his own.

Pete

 

[Daverw]

Not sure why fog would stop GPS, I’ve never had this either on the boat or on land with phone or portable GPS. Especially on newer units.

 

[scottie]

I have been in the position of asking for CG assistance in very squally (20-30kt) conditions and and having to give them updated positions. Despite having a mike and plotter at the helm, the wind was bad enough to affect the command mike, so I had to go below to the chart table radio and plotter be audible, leaving a rather inexperienced crew to handle the boat.
No big problem, but it would have been more difficult if single handed.
Is "What 3 Words" the way of the future? I'm surprised that there seems to have been little discussion of this innovative system on these forums.

I suspect that W3W is going to become a real asset as it is simple to use but some will find it too simple
It is being used by emergency services more and more I understand but I don’t think there are any likelihood of charts being available

 

[Fossil]

I sail with family. In honking weather the wife is much more likely to be looking after the (young) kids than steering. And anyway, I know for a fact that she'd would only agree to be on the helm in bad weather in the direst of dire emergencies (say I was dead or completely incapacitated). And I don't have any form of self steering. So unless I was able to heave to there's no way I could get to the chart table.

In good weather its perfectly fine. The boat is balanced enough for me to leave it to sail itself for a few minutes and keep an hourly position fix marked on the chart, fill in the log etc. In really bad weather that's not gonna happen, so if it comes to it I'll be reading lat & long off my phone or using distance and bearing.

I suppose I really ought to buy a DSC radio...

I'd suggest a better investment would be an auto-pilot of whatever kind suits your vessel best. how anyone can sail (what amounts to) singlehanded without one, defeats me. Tied to the helm, unable to attend to anything else on the boat without heaving it to, too risky for me! A DSC radio is nice to have, but not actually essential. An autohelm, in the circumstances you describe, IS essential.

 

[LadyInBed]

He’s talking about receiving someone else’s position, not transmitting his own.

Pete

Not how I read it, and the reply in #17 confirmed it.

 

[prv]

Not how I read it, and the reply in #17 confirmed it.

If he's transmitting his position, where does remembering numbers come in? Why not just read them off the screen - are the plotter and VHF at opposite ends of the boat? And having written down his lat and long, why's he trying to find the corresponding position on the chart in order to transmit... the lat and long he already has? No - he heard the lat and long of a distressed boat read out, once, on the radio, and now he's scrambling to figure out where those half-remembered numbers point to in real-world terms. I regularly have the exact same problem.


Post #17 doesn't confirm that he's trying to find his own lat and long, it's a description of how it's difficult to turn a lat and long into a position on (one model of) plotter. He has to keep clicking on spots to see if the lat and long it presents for that location is the one he copied for the distressed boat. None of that makes any sense if it was his own position he wanted. Even if his plotter didn't have a direct read-out, he'd at least only have to click the cursor once, on his own little boat symbol, not keep hunting and pecking around the ocean until he finds where the one in trouble is.

Pete

 

[DJE]

Last year I responded to a call from the coastguard for "Any vessel able to offer assistance". (Lat/long numbers put it somewhere near me by mental arithmetic.) I asked the coastguard for a bearing and distance from St Catherine's Point to the casualty for ease of plotting but they couldn't give it to me. So I had to write down the position then plot it on the paper chart. Maybe I need more practice with the plotter.

 

[capnsensible]

I think personally that being able to plot a lat long gps fix quickly on a chart is a skill every navigator should have. After all its easy and doesnt take much practice.....

 

[mjcoon]

I suspect that W3W is going to become a real asset as it is simple to use but some will find it too simple
It is being used by emergency services more and more I understand but I don’t think there are any likelihood of charts being available

And I think that would be connected with the fact that adjacent "positions" have no relation to each other, so it is impossible to see if one position is near another or far away, unlike lat/long or OSGB.

Mike.

 

[Daydream believer]

The CG insist on lat and long positions. There are at least two reasons for this.
1. Simple lack of local knowledge.
2. Possible confusion due to multiple places having the same name.

You forgot to add
3) Tick sheet does not have any squares for "range & bearings"

 

[mjcoon]

If he's transmitting his position, where does remembering numbers come in? Why not just read them off the screen - are the plotter and VHF at opposite ends of the boat? And having written down his lat and long, why's he trying to find the corresponding position on the chart in order to transmit... the lat and long he already has? No - he heard the lat and long of a distressed boat read out, once, on the radio, and now he's scrambling to figure out where those half-remembered numbers point to in real-world terms. I regularly have the exact same problem.


Post #17 doesn't confirm that he's trying to find his own lat and long, it's a description of how it's difficult to turn a lat and long into a position on (one model of) plotter. He has to keep clicking on spots to see if the lat and long it presents for that location is the one he copied for the distressed boat. None of that makes any sense if it was his own position he wanted. Even if his plotter didn't have a direct read-out, he'd at least only have to click the cursor once, on his own little boat symbol, not keep hunting and pecking around the ocean until he finds where the one in trouble is.

Pete

Surely every plotter has the ability to be given a waypoint by lat/long and show it on the plot? And would not every user know how to do that?

Mike.

 

[blenkinsop]

Some years ago, I heard a 'mayday' call from a motorboat in the Solent, correctly giving Lat and Long. The coastguard response included a suggestion that 'just off Yarmouth pier' would have been sufficient.
The rescue was carried out by the water taxi.

 

[MoodySabre]

Surely every plotter has the ability to be given a waypoint by lat/long and show it on the plot? And would not every user know how to do that?

Mike.

I have a Yeoman. Finding a position is easy and to instantly show range and bearing. Some electronics I see on friends boats seems to very complicated and they just use the screen to show their own position. Perhaps they don't use it often enough or for other purposes like route planning. Even a DSC manual is a small book.

 

[scottie]

And I think that would be connected with the fact that adjacent "positions" have no relation to each other, so it is impossible to see if one position is near another or far away, unlike lat/long or OSGB.

Mike.

True it’s both a plus and a minus
It’s a little bit like the stopped clock only being correct twice a day as opposed to a slow clock being almost right most of the time

 

[johnalison]

If he's transmitting his position, where does remembering numbers come in? Why not just read them off the screen - are the plotter and VHF at opposite ends of the boat? And having written down his lat and long, why's he trying to find the corresponding position on the chart in order to transmit... the lat and long he already has? No - he heard the lat and long of a distressed boat read out, once, on the radio, and now he's scrambling to figure out where those half-remembered numbers point to in real-world terms. I regularly have the exact same problem.


Post #17 doesn't confirm that he's trying to find his own lat and long, it's a description of how it's difficult to turn a lat and long into a position on (one model of) plotter. He has to keep clicking on spots to see if the lat and long it presents for that location is the one he copied for the distressed boat. None of that makes any sense if it was his own position he wanted. Even if his plotter didn't have a direct read-out, he'd at least only have to click the cursor once, on his own little boat symbol, not keep hunting and pecking around the ocean until he finds where the one in trouble is.

Pete

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear but you are right, it was the difficulty of locating another boat's position on the screen that I was referring to. My own position is patently obvious, as well a being available on a repeater. All I can say about those who think that finding another boat's position from a broadcast lat and long is easy is that they can't have tried it while on passage. A chart helps, but even on a chart it takes time to plot an exact position.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I have been in the position of asking for CG assistance in very squally (20-30kt) conditions and and having to give them updated positions. Despite having a mike and plotter at the helm, the wind was bad enough to affect the command mike, so I had to go below to the chart table radio and plotter be audible, leaving a rather inexperienced crew to handle the boat.
No big problem, but it would have been more difficult if single handed.
Is "What 3 Words" the way of the future? I'm surprised that there seems to have been little discussion of this innovative system on these forums.

Not at sea, I don't think, for several reasons:

1) Almost all vessels have direct access to lat/long. Anyone with access to WhatThreeWords certainly does!
2) DSC transmits lat/long automatically.
3) WhatThreeWords is biased towards English speakers (I may be wrong about that, but if I am, it means that an English speaker receiving a French whatThreeWords might not recognize and be able to spell all the words, and vice-versa). The sea is international...
4) I think WhatThreeWords depends on an internet connection, but I'm not sure of that. It obviously requires access to a lookup table to supply the words. I make it that there are about 100,000,000,000,000 possible combinations required to cover the whole Earth (back of the envelope calculation, but reasonable!) - that requires a vocabulary of around 29,000,000 words to cover the world.
5) Does WhatThreeWords cover the whole surface of the Earth? Considerations such as the above suggest that it doesn't and can't.

I think WhatThreeWords is a great idea for terrestrial use, where most people haven't the faintest idea of their position in any absolute coordinate system. But at sea, we do (or should) have a pretty good idea of our position in absolute Lat/Long coordinates. Precision isn't that important - degrees and minutes ought to get a SAR resource close enough in most circumstances; and even getting it down to 10 second accuracy will get SAR to within a couple of hundred yards. Until the advent of GPS, most of us didn't know our position more accurately than that!

I agree entirely that a position given with reference to well-known named locations is useful as well, though, for all the reasons already given - while it isn't a problem for me to give lat./long, I confess that I'm not always particularly awarof my lat/long when out for a day, and a position given with respect to the things I'm eye-ball navigating by would be better to allow me to know whether I'm in a position to give assistance or not.

 

[mjcoon]

True it’s both a plus and a minus
It’s a little bit like the stopped clock only being correct twice a day as opposed to a slow clock being almost right most of the time

Oh dear, are we about to stray into relativity?

Mike.

 

[mjcoon]

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear but you are right, it was the difficulty of locating another boat's position on the screen that I was referring to. My own position is patently obvious, as well a being available on a repeater. All I can say about those who think that finding another boat's position from a broadcast lat and long is easy is that they can't have tried it while on passage. A chart helps, but even on a chart it takes time to plot an exact position.

Perhaps a non-marine example is relevant. I have a smartphone and tablet. The phone has a new and sensitive GPS and can be held against an airliner window to tell me how far we have got (to pass the time...). But the tablet is better for showing a map. So I wrote a small program that displays lat/long as one of those QR 2-D bar-codes on the phone screen. The tablet bar-code reading app recognises it as a location and calls up a map program. So I don't have to copy the numbers across myself.

Admittedly QR codes are no help on a voice channel, but digital would be so much more reliable for this purpose, and maybe even W3W locations could be spelled out if they are ambiguous, and easier to put in short-term memory. (I suppose ideally the words are never puns!)

Mike.

 

[mjcoon]

I make it that there are about 100,000,000,000,000 possible combinations required to cover the whole Earth (back of the envelope calculation, but reasonable!) - that requires a vocabulary of around 29,000,000 words to cover the world.

According to my home-made calculator:
100000000000000 ^ (1/3)=46415.8883361278
(where "^ (1/3)" means cube-root)

So five thousand words should be enough, three at a time.

Mike.

 

[LadyInBed]

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear but you are right, it was the difficulty of locating another boat's position on the screen that I was referring to. My own position is patently obvious, as well a being available on a repeater. All I can say about those who think that finding another boat's position from a broadcast lat and long is easy is that they can't have tried it while on passage. A chart helps, but even on a chart it takes time to plot an exact position.

It's me that should apologise for misinterpreting your post!
A tip for finding the other boats relative position (having written down the Lat/Long) Put an arbitrary WP into your CP, then edit the Lat/Long to the written down one, then GoTo that WP will give you Range and Bearing.