New RYA training charts - Time zones - rant

[obmij]

There is a sticky on the YBW loading page 'best sailing watches, 12 options that actually help on your boat'. They are mainly plug in garmins which connect with everything from your plotter to your underfloor heating back at home. Bonza.

A genuinely useful watch (and one which is sadly lacking from the list) is a GMT or dual time watch. They were originally commissioned from Rolex by Pan-AM to issue to their pilots when jet travel was becoming a thing in the 1950's. Rolex still make the most iconic GMT's but most watchmakers have a GMT or two in the lineup so you can pick one up at pretty much every price point. They are usually automatic so no batteries or winding required. A good one will also be a certified chromometer which of course has its own benefits when it comes to navigation. They are not complicated. One hand points to GMT, LT and date is set as normal (you can alter this independently, without disturbing the GMT hand) and a third timezone can be referenced if the watch has a rotating bezel.

I wear one every day and always know what time it is. Word

 

[obmij]

What can i say. Everybody's unique. I'm different.
Started sailing in my mid 30's. 1988 Stopped by divorce,
restarted a number of times since.
1995 stopped by marriage to H2O-phobe, stopped again by son's birth, 2002 too non-bendy for darts and dinghys did comp crew sailed OPBs for a couple of years, stopped by my son's chronic illness, 2007 Day skipper lots of day sailing bang! son goes into 5 month coma and i lived in hospitals and rehabilitation hospices for two and a half years, since then work from home because he needs two carers. Had to shelve everything sailing and not think about it. 2014 stopped work. 2016 I'm 62 and determined, restarted sailing again with a fractional outfit, respite (from 24/7 caring) daysails. Wife doesn't support this idea, multiple hospital stays with my son because he is now severely disabled and has no language. Continue to daysail when we're discharged. 2017 I'm now 63 still bumbing along the bottom of sailing. Wife informs me my sailing is unacceptable. (strange agreement with my crew) we live completely separate lives co-caring.
2019 next to him critical in hospital again, get solicitor's emailed letter wanting "mutual divorce" (reason ...I do my own laundry!). I Agree. Have last Xmas with son at home before divorce progresses. January he's critical again, divorce still on pause. February I'm back sleeping next to a ward bed in hospital overlooking Brighton Marina. 5 weeks of beautiful sailing days later we discharge because Covid is encroaching the ward and my son is immunosuppressed. I saw 3 men die on this outing 2 of them only had me with them. LOCKDOWN where everyone in the country joined my constrained isolated world.
Followed by SHIELDING, virus still out their, son still immunnosuppressive. I still can't sail.
Do a distance learning Coastal Skipper.
Hence my first post took 3 years. Hence my 5011 is from 1989. Hence my perennial learner/relearner mode. Hence my general misfitted-ness.
Watch this space.

I don't know if you're still following this thread but hope things improved and you've managed to get out on the water.

Fair winds sailor

 

[Uricanejack]

I don't know if this helps but is what I do in the real world.

Boat time is always UTC, no matter what time zone I am in. In the summer it saves all that faffing about with adding an hour to tide tables. The sun rises and sets and does not worry about time zones.

I convert everything back to UTC, e.g. CET tides get changed to UTC, calculations done in UTC and if needed converted back to local time.

This summer on a trip from Portugal, in BST, we stopped off in Spain and France, CET Daylight saving Time, then back to the UK on BST. Several crew members got very confused moving time zones, but a quick look at my watch and the addition of one or two hours was easy.

To quote Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 'Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.', which sums up the confusion I felt when doing my YM Theory. I saw familiar names and stretches of coastline that they had moved about thus confusing my few remaining brain cells.

It’s all ok if you know where your towel is.

 

[Sandy]

It’s all ok if you know where your towel is.

One in the heads, a wee hand towel and a bunch on the third shelf down on the port wardrobe in the fore cabin.

 

[Daedelus]

Plus half a dozen old ones in the "engineering" locker for mopping up just about anything.

 

[dolabriform]

It’s all ok if you know where your towel is.

42

 

[Birdseye]

Every Instructor has his own methods.This is the first I have heard of screening candidates prior to the course but I have not been involved in instruction for about 7 years so things may have changed.Opinions vary on calculating Secondary Port times and heights of tide but I used to be happy for candidates to use graphs,calculators or Mark I eyeball (my favourite instrument) as long as a reasonably accurate answer was arrived at.

I took the same view when I was teaching. Its pointless to do these sort of calculations to 3dp because the data you are basing on isnt that reliable and the need on the boat isnt that precise. Even your charts arent accurate to a pencil line width.

 

[SaltyC]

My problem with chart 3 and 4 was it is 'fictional' plus the change from GMT to UT.

Once I (think) I understood North Peninsular is UK (Equivalent) and Southern Peninsular is France. GMT and GMT + 1, I then as a person of a certain age, needed to get around UT.

Unfortunately there are certain of our continental cousins who never liked GMT, so through the EU it was changed to UT, instead of the Logic we Anglo Saxons understand GMT + 1 is 1 hour ahead and quite easy to understand we now get have Gallic Logic of UT - 1. ie from your current timezone you subtract 1 hour to get to a standard rather than basing the maths on the standard. So, you are your standard time and THE standard is subservient.

Once you get your mind around inverse logic it does work. But to say it is irrelevant and wrong is incorrect, illogical and wrong yes.

 

[capnsensible]

I took the same view when I was teaching. Its pointless to do these sort of calculations to 3dp because the data you are basing on isnt that reliable and the need on the boat isnt that precise. Even your charts arent accurate to a pencil line width.

Sharpen your pencil.

 

[SaltyC]

Sharpen your pencil.

Being lazy, you have to go to 0.7mm with a Staedler propelling pencil to get a 2B lead.

 

[Sandy]

My problem with chart 3 and 4 was it is 'fictional' plus the change from GMT to UT.

Same thing here, plus seeing familiar place names and coastline

Unfortunately there are certain of our continental cousins who never liked GMT, so through the EU it was changed to UT, instead of the Logic we Anglo Saxons understand GMT + 1 is 1 hour ahead and quite easy to understand we now get have Gallic Logic of UT - 1. ie from your current timezone you subtract 1 hour to get to a standard rather than basing the maths on the standard. So, you are your standard time and THE standard is subservient.

You may find it was the international scientific community. By the way the French have a primary meridian based on Paris and the Russians based on Moscow.

 

[SaltyC]

Same thing here, plus seeing familiar place names and coastline

You may find it was the international scientific community. By the way the French have a primary meridian based on Paris and the Russians based on Moscow.

Can we go back to Anglo Saxon logic and GMT then please?????

 

[Sandy]

Can we go back to Anglo Saxon logic and GMT then please?????

Use what you want on your boat. I like UTC hence everything on-board my boat is set to UTC.

 

[Daedelus]

I used to find it awkward with the use of real places in the charts but missing odd bits - where did Langstone harbour go?

 

[SaltyC]

I used to find it awkward with the use of real places in the charts but missing odd bits - where did Langstone harbour go?

Or non existent islands and France and the CI moving approximately 60 miles west??

 

[Skysail]

I once asked why the RYA used fictitious charts. The previous versions transferred Cumbrae to the coast of Devon!

Before that they used real charts, but they did not have sufficient detail for teaching purposes. They now contain almost every chart symbol in 5011. Students had no problem with them.