Nav techniques

How do you normally navigate?

  • I never bother with plotters/ charts or calculations

    Votes: 3 2.9%

  • I navigate by chart & eye (+/- electronic back up)

    Votes: 73 70.2%

  • Navigation is not possible without proper RYA calcs

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I rely on my plotter/ radar & don't need fancy calcs

    Votes: 15 14.4%

  • I enjoy/need detailed calcs to back up my electronics

    Votes: 13 12.5%
  • Total voters
    104
Searush

Searush

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Following the Navigation thread, I get the impression that many on this forum claim to spend hours doing detailed "classroom standard" paper navigation exercises down below.

I haven't done that for many years. I can navigate from a folded chart on my knee without instruments or calculations. OK my positions are not 100% accurate - but they are perfectly good enough to safely get me around an area of strong tides, dangerous tidalgates, drying harbours & shifting sand banks without problems for 20 years. In addition I get to spend more time in the cockpit enjoying the views & fresh air. Oh, and I do have a PC based chart plotter if I need confirmation or greater accuracy for any reason.
 
Theory and Practice

How you normally navigate depends on WHERE you normally navigate...

If it's in your own backyard, Mark 1 eyeball may be all you need. Your poll won't enlighten anybody as it stands.
 
JayBee said:
How you normally navigate depends on WHERE you normally navigate...

If it's in your own backyard, Mark 1 eyeball may be all you need. Your poll won't enlighten anybody as it stands.
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Fine, most people sail within a fairly well defined area most of the time. Long open sea passages may differ from coastal trips, but DR is more of an art than an accurate science. Write your own poll if you don't like mine!:p

What I am talking about is taking an eyeball "sight" from a landmark & transferring that to an orientated chart on your knee & then doing the same from another to get a location. You can then take a "bearing" from the chart position & transfer it to a point on the horizon or a course on the helm that you maintain by compass or by aiming at that point on the horizon. Tidal & leeway allowances need to be made, but as they are a best guess anyway, a judgement on the helm will do.

This sort of technique only takes seconds & doesn't even require you to leave the helm. Now, to do detailed RYA style classroom calcs will take several minutes below on a desk or table. The complication increases the risk of error & someone else has to be steering/ looking out.
 
I use the 'it's that way' method of navigation when sailing in familiar waters. I usually don't even get the chart out of the draw when sailing on the south coast any more. Often on overnight trips the chart is out and on the table usually more for the benefit of the crew rather than myself.

Any pilotage into unfamiliar ports gets done with the almanac in the cockpit, unless the chartplotters running, then I start bobbing up and down like a meerkat.

Yachtmaster course type navigation is good to know. But I'm afraid I won't be using it in anger until I'm in low visibility with a dodgy GPS.
 
Searush said:
Oh, and I do have a PC based chart plotter if I need confirmation or greater accuracy for any reason.
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The poll seems pretty clear and valuable to me. :)

I had a good one a couple of weekends ago, on a run around the island... Leaving an area of very sneaky rocks I decided I was in the clear based on GPS, but decided to have a good look round; the GPS had me a crucial few feet further offshore than I really was which meant there was a nasty little rock right under the bow.

Always keep your head up and an eye on the landmarks!
 
the GPS had me a crucial few feet further offshore than I really was which meant there was a nasty little rock right under the bow.
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"If the terrain differs from the map, believe the terrain". Swedish Army (inventors of orienteering) saying
 
Ye'r all wrong, I tell you. Even that Bartlett Fellow! Navigation is a thinking skill, and is done between the ears.

All the rest - plotters, pencils, sextants, sounders, e-nav, radar, charts, almanacs, pilotage plans, the 'feelings in the water' - are just 'aids to'...... and whatever you choose to use is very much a matter of how 'bovvered' you are about the personal consequences of getting it badly wrong.

'Mk 1 Eyeball' works just fine. You have my word on that. If you can't find France from either end of Wight, or Belgium/Holland/Germany/Denmark from the RN&SYC, simply by pointing in the right direction and keeping going until you get there, you really shouldn't be boating. And you won't be for long.

You really just need confidence that Europe will remain more or less where it was put, while you're en route.

Only if you have some over-arching need for precision - like a deep-seated, incurable lack of confidence or a desire to impress the little mem'sahib - do you truly have a requirement for ever more complex and expensive toys.

After a lifetime doing ever more convoluted navigational chart-plottery, I'm now with Searush on this. It's much more interesting, and certainly memorable, to gaze serenely around at the world from the comfort of the cockpit, while watching all the jagged, interesting, and memorable lumps of granite slip by just a few feet away.

:D
 
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That's all very well but I recently had a week where practically every landfall was at night, in a port I'd never visited, single handed and knackered and although I'd set myself up a course counting buoyage, churches, martello towers, nuclear power stations, wind farms etc. it was nice to have confirmation of these things popping up on a plotter as otherwise I'd have had to heave to regularly and work up a fix and I should probably still be out there freezing my nuts off.
 
bilbobaggins said:
Even that Bartlett Fellow!
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Who, me? I never said a word. Haven't even voted in the poll.

bilbobaggins said:
You really just need confidence that Europe will remain more or less where it was put, while you're en route.
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That's probably the most important bit. But there are a whole generation of boaters around who have never "navigated" without GPS, many of whom seem to doubt the existence of the Isle of Wight even when they are looking straight at it.

And despite all the implied criticism of the RYA syllabus, I wouldn't mind betting that the only ones who are able to "gaze serenely around at the world from the comfort of the cockpit" are the ones who have somehow acquired the skills of basic tradnav.
 
In the days before GPS, even before sat-navs, and with Decca unheard of in these latitudes, we used to navigate by estimating speed (no log), using the Mk 1 eyeball, getting the null on a transistor radio (hopefully from a station where we were intending to arrive at) - and if all else failed, wait until a LIAT aeroplane flew overhead (good for trips from the islands back to Barbados) to confirm that our destination was still thataway.
These days we have a wee hand held GPS and its a doddle! :)
 
It's an interesting set of choices. Perhaps the problem is the same as with modern multiple-choice exams: it dumbs down the understanding of the respondent, and misses the nuances of what they understand and what they don't.

But none the less useful a poll for it!

Anyway, I found myself in a hybrid category: sort of 'I rely on sketched calculations and my plotter (+/- paper chart backup)'. Tidal heights and timings on a scrap of paper or waterproof pad; then pretty much everything else with one eye on the chartplotter and the other on reality (don't picture this too visually). On Channel crossings or something more challenging, there's always a paper chart down below and a few crosses marked on it. Strikes me as common sense really.
 
An interesting aside. I normally do my tidal calcs by rule of 1/12 s but last season I found myself doing a full secondary port calculation. I was drying out in a small harbour and wanted to know when the water would be gone so I could do a scrub. Just to make it more interesting, I only buy an almanac every other year so I had to work out HW Dover from this year's Plymouth tide tables, then work out from the depth at a given time how long it would take for the tide to drop to the level of the sand as shown on the depth guage. I was right to within a few minutes. Nice to know I can drag the old stuff out when required. I even celebrated by drawing a few cocked hats on the way back :)
 
I'm pleased to see that I'm in the 65% majority, based upon the questions asked.

"All available means" also springs to mind. I confess to being a bit of an anorak so even on a flat calm sea in lovely sunshine I'll take an occasional 3-point fix, even better a running flix to maintain the practice. As others have said, if you need a pilotage plan to enter an unfamiliar port during darkness or if you need to run a contour to a safe haven in fog, it's better to have practiced skills (it helps crew morale, too).

It depends on how adventurous a sailor you are, IMHO!
 
timbartlett said:
That's probably the most important bit. But there are a whole generation of boaters around who have never "navigated" without GPS, many of whom seem to doubt the existence of the Isle of Wight even when they are looking straight at it.

And despite all the implied criticism of the RYA syllabus, I wouldn't mind betting that the only ones who are able to "gaze serenely around at the world from the comfort of the cockpit" are the ones who have somehow acquired the skills of basic tradnav.
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If your honest when using a chart plotter, especially a large screen one, you are really just navigating by Mk 1 eyeball anyway. Using the plotter to confirm what your looking at out the window.
 
Some interesting responses thank you. :)

Dear Mr Bartling, You are absolutely correct, IF one knows the principles (aquired by hard slog in the classroom or with lots of practical experience & practice plots) the easy going approach can be carried off. I am not criticising the RYA syllabus - it is an excellent teaching technique. I just worry that people often (as Bulbous suggests) lack the confidence to move on. Detailed paper plotting has its place, but is not necessarily the best, or most effective, technique for solo sailing pilotage.

In my view, there are too many esoteric discussions of detailed principles of navigation & col regs on here that bear little relationship to the real needs of conducting a small leisure boat at sea, especially if short-handed.

I hadn't considered the idea before, but I think Bilbao Bagpuss has hit the nail on the head. It is probably a lack of self-confidence that leads people to NEED detailed calculations.

GPS is nice, useful, effective & simple. I have used it to give me extra confidence to rock hop the N passage of the Swellies, but I am always aware that it could fail at any time - even if it doesn't often fail, Sod's law says it will happen at the worst possible time.

Puts tin hat back on & ducks back into fox hole to wait for incoming flac.:cool:
 
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