Need to know where you are? Or happy with where you're not?

[Conachair]

So how is it on your boat, can you happily drift around not knowing exactly where you are but certain enough that you ain't going to hit anything for ages or do you need an x on the chart within a few metres every 10 seconds. ????

I think knowing where you are not is really the big one, where you are is less interesting.

Personally I'm not too bothered so long as when it starts to count I'm up current and up wind. Or somethng like that

 

[sarabande]

It's fine not to know, if you have a good geographic eidetic memory.


But...

 

[photodog]

It depends where you are.

 

[Conachair]

It depends where you are.

more than "certain enough that you ain't going to hit anything for ages"?

Well, yes. But if you have a transit or a not more than bearing or something like that who cares where you are?

Point is I think people get too hung up on the need for exactness rather letting go a bit with knowing exactly where they aren't!

Quite liberating not knowing where you are

 

[AndrewB]

Prior to satellite navigation we considered ourselves lost the moment we were out of sight of land. Landfall, i.e. making a positive identification on raising a headland, was crucial.

Back in 1970 while sailing across the Channel in calm weather I came across a yacht drifting and looking abandonned. I motored up to find a guy asleep in the cockpit, surrounded by empties.

"Where are we?" he asked blearily. "23 miles SSW of St Alban's Head", I said, proud of my DR skills. "Oh, English Channel then", and he went back to sleep. Never did find out who he was, probably some famous blue water yachtsman!

 

[Twister_Ken]

Prior to satellite navigation we considered ourselves lost the moment we were out of sight of land. Landfall, i.e. making a positive identification on raising a headland, was crucial.

Back in 1970 while sailing across the Channel in calm weather I came across a yacht drifting and looking abandonned. I motored up to find a guy asleep in the cockpit, surrounded by empties.

"Where are we?" he asked blearily. "23 miles SSW of St Alban's Head", I said, proud of my DR skills. "Oh, English Channel then", and he went back to sleep. Never did find out who he was, probably some famous blue water yachtsman!

Love it.

 

[mcframe]

"Where are we?" he asked blearily. "23 miles SSW of St Alban's Head", I said, proud of my DR skills. "Oh, English Channel then", and he went back to sleep. Never did find out who he was, probably some famous blue water yachtsman!

<ding>
Knowing where you are not is often more important than knowing where you are, if you excuse the Rumsfeldism.

But that doesn't mean I'm not comparatively obsessive about knowing where I'm not ;-)

 

[Bajansailor]

Thirty odd years ago, in the days before GPS, and even before basic sat-navs were available, and being too skint to afford a Loran (if it worked down this way; probably not), we used to happily sail around the Windward Islands just on DR and guess work - oh, and a hand held transistor radio was reasonably good for DF (better than a trusty Sea-Fix!) to identify (hopefully) which island lay ahead on the horizon......

Once set off from Barbados on an overnight passage bound for Bequia, 95 miles west - its usually a doddle downhill run but on this trip the wind was SW (unusual, but happens occasionally in summer) and we were hard on port tack - next morning found us off St Lucia, so the passage plan rapidly changed to visiting the watering holes of Rodney Bay instead of Admiralty Bay...... (we had somewhat underestimated our leeway and the north setting current......).

Returning to Barbados from the islands, the easiest way (if we had a nice N'easterly, fairly reliable in winter) was to set off on port tack on a fairly close reach from Martinique, and have a play with the tranny radio occasionally to see if the radio station was above or below our course..... if we were lucky we could do it in one tack, and about 24 hours. And on a clear night we could use the loom of the lights over the island for guidance (could see the loom from 40 miles out sometimes).

DR becomes a bit more difficult if you have to beat - I heard stories about gaff schooners with cargo setting off for Barbados from the islands, painfully beating their way to where they thought Barbados should be, seeing no sign of any land, and heading west again, claiming that Barbados had 'disappeared'......

I once met a singlehander who had just arrived in Carlisle Bay and had dropped his anchor - I paddled over to say hello.
He mentioned that he wasnt too sure about his navigation, didn't have any charts of the islands, just an Atlantic chart, and had been sailing on DR for a week or so as he hadn't seen the sun at all during that time, so he enquired if this was Barbados?
I couldn't resist telling him it was Tobago, whereupon he got rather worried "Dang, I didn't think I was so far out on my DR!"
I did then fess up that he had arrived in Barbados, and he was very pleased.....

I think that Chris Doyle mentions in his Guides about how he used to have a 'bareboat' for charter in the Grenadines in the early 70's - and it was 'bare' (it did have electric lights, but no instruments, and a lead line for depth). And now bareboat charterers panic in the Grenadines if their chart plotter packs up......

 

[PhillM]

Personally, I am paraniod about where I am! Last year was my first with my own boat and we sail int he Solent (not got out yet .. that's for this year).

It is so busy in the Solent and there are so many hazards that I feel that I need to now excatly where we are all all times.

My sense is that as one becomes more experenced, goes on longer passages and sails well offshore, actual position over periods of time becomes less important. The closer to the coast and to busy shipping lanes, the more important it is.