Navigation Style for Day Skipper - Advice from Instructors?

[jrc1983]

With the shipping community on the cusp of ditching paper charts, production costs will rise for leisure paper charts which will lead to their demise in the next 10 years or so. At this point everyone, even the traditionalists, will suddenly realise the virtue of electronics

Yes, and the shipping industry has at long last sat up and realised that reliance on electronic media is dangerous, which is why many companies already have a policy of carrying suitable paper charts as well as the electronic type, even if the ship has clearance to go 'paperless'.

 

[DaveS]

Using a slide-rule pretty quickly teaches you about rounding and cumulative errors! And at best three significant figure accuracy.

I'm very glad that I was one of the last of the slide rule generation. For most practical applications 2 significant figures are quite enough; 3 if you really want high precision. The need to keep the order of magnitude of the answer in your head while using a slide rule to get the numbers was a great discipline: I still use it. I've lost count of the number of times I've immediately (and correctly) said "that's wrong" when someone after much button pressing announces an answer with lots of significant figures but with the decimal point in the wrong place.

 

[Skylark]

What a great thread

I recall with some amusement that in 1976, the Dean gave permission for us, 2nd year engineering under graduates, to use electronic calculators during the end of year exams. I probably still have my first Commodore somewhere in the loft. I most certainly still have log tables, pocket and full size Thornton slide rules. In those days, a computer was programmed in Fortran using punch cards.

In response to the OP, how to impress the instructor on a Day Skipper course...........easy............leave your electronics in the glove box of your car in the car park.

Isn't the definition of a DS someone who can skipper a yacht by day in familiar waters? What on earth do you need electronics for

What's wrong with chart, instruments, compass, depth and log?

If the last fix was, say 45 minutes ago and, heaven forbid, fog came down, I would be impressed if the DS candidate could construct an EP and discuss his reasons for deciding upon his circle of uncertainty.

 

[Babylon]

What a great thread

...

In response to the OP, how to impress the instructor on a Day Skipper course...........easy............leave your electronics in the glove box of your car in the car park.

Isn't the definition of a DS someone who can skipper a yacht by day in familiar waters? What on earth do you need electronics for

What's wrong with chart, instruments, compass, depth and log?

...

Clearly put.

Of course the OP - or anybody else for that matter - isn't obligated to do any RYA course at all in order to go sailing.

 

[mcframe]

The new generation generally exhibit a look somewhere between disbelief and horror when I pull out Nories and work through the log tables instead of using a scientific calculator.
What flummoxes them even more is that I can generally do it quicker than they can rattle all the numbers into their calculator!

When I did my CS exam about 8 years ago, the "old-school" examiner (who incidentally, spent much time below watching *his* h/h GPS and *listening* to what was happening in cockpit) asked me for a CTS.
We'd just passed a mark, so I had a rough idea where the tide was going; a quick glance at the compass and flick of my head, and I knew the wind. I thought for a bit and said "about 105 magnetic".
He smiled and said "OK, now work it out"
5 min later, I shout up "Please steer 097"

I guess I was lucky, but I passed. I.e. the 105 was good enough as a first approximation.

If the maths had said 280, I'd have known something was wrong.

 

[prv]

In those days, a computer was programmed in Fortran using punch cards.

They still are programmed in Fortran for a lot of science and engineering type stuff. My brother does geological calculations using Fortran. On an iMac, though, not a card punch

Pete