if GPS were not available

[jimi]

What would your next best indispensible aid to navigation be?

 

[YELLOW BOAT]

Common sense !

 

[Searush]

Eyesight & a chart. What else do you need?

Well, OK, & a log if out of sight of land.

 

[Twister_Ken]

What it always used to be.

Compass, log, depth, tidal atlas and sextant if you were going more than a couple of hundred miles.

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

The Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry

 

[dylanwinter]

the other etrex and a pea stick

can't see that GPS is ever going to stop

and if it did - well I guess I would have other things to worry about other than where I was - like who was about to send in the nuclear bombs

I always carry a spare GPS with me and I use a pea stick to tell me when I am about to bump into the bottom

Dylan

 

[Koeketiene]

What would your next best indispensible aid to navigation be?

Compass
Echosounder
Charts
Log

 

[taz]

The Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry

Just spat my coffee all over the keyboard Visions of Dellboy asking directions at the oil rig.

 

[Juniperskip]

My Navigator!!!!!!!!

 

[Evadne]

Ee ah remember it well. Kids today don't know how lucky they are, all we 'ad were a cardboard astrolabe an' a pidgeon.

 

[Kelpie]

Why are we encouraged to be so cautious about GPS? In everything you read, in RYA courses, etc etc, the emphasis is always on using GPS to check your position, and having the knowledge to navigate 'the good old fashioned way' as the primary means. As if we are expecting GPS to be suddenly turned off?
One method encouraged under the 'good old fashioned way' is to use your sounder and navigate by contours. But why should I trust one box of elektrikery more than another?

And now we are entering an age where many people seem to advocate using EPIRBS and DSC as the primary means of making a distress call. More little boxes. And these ones are inherently reliant on GPS So it's OK to depend on it for your life, but you can't rely on it to navigate in the first place?

 

[macd]

Ee ah remember it well. Kids today don't know how lucky they are, all we 'ad were a cardboard astrolabe an' a pidgeon.

A pigeon? And more old pence than you knew what to do with. Tha' were lucky

 

[Csail]

I use gps but cope fine with radar and paper chart.Actually radar is better.(close to land)

 

[Searush]

Nah, Rob, it's just too much fag to turn it on & have all those banks of batteries charged.

BTW, are we now safe from the Sunspot storms we were promised that would wipe out all electronics, including t'Interweb, all computers, satellites cars, aeroplanes, phones, TVs & even your iPlayer?

 

[snooks]

A chart - preferably one of the area I'm cruising

From that I could work out roughly where I am and where I want to go if I was sailing along the coast.

Then an echo sounder

Then a Compass

Then Radar

 

[Barnacle Bill]

Bottle.

You can get around perfectly safely with all the original methods and tools (inc sextant of course) but it takes a good deal of experience to have the courage to do so.

 

[Baggy]

Charts... and a Yeoman plotter.... wet finger for wind speed and direction..

done me alright..

 

[Rivers & creeks]

Ee ah remember it well. Kids today don't know how lucky they are, all we 'ad were a cardboard astrolabe an' a pidgeon.

Thar were lucky. We ad te eat our pidgeon when we was maroooooned on Dogger Bank.

 

[capnsensible]

Well interesting to see replies from those that learnt to sail when gps was in his dads bag.

Unruffled and not obsessed with accuracy to one thousandths of the width of a gnats willy!!

I think we all accept no one is going to turn the acess off, but look to your hardware. It gets broken. People use the aeriel as a handhold when vomming, etc, etc.

Then Captain Perfect whips out his super handheld (complete wth a crate of new batteries), drops it coz its a wobbly boat and it breaks.

I plan for the worst so I am only a bit dissapointed!!!!!

 

[KINGFISHER 9]

Chart and a pencil (use the pointy end).