No GPS? No problem.....

MontyMariner said:
Oh contraire, it got me out of trouble one dark foggy night sailing from Cherbourg to St PP.
Left Ch on a bright sunny afternoon, got to the Cap and into thick fog which persisted all the way to St PP. I had DECCA waypoints from previous trips so followed them down, turned right at the last WP and saw the glow of the harbour lights. Relief doesn't describe it.
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Weirdly, the LR channel near St PP was the place where I desperately needed it and it let me down in a rather critical fashion. 😬
 
DanTribe said:
I sailed a Vivacity 650 with a friend from Crouch to Ijmuiden in 1976. We had a Pilot Pal RDF which didn't help much but we reasoned that if we missed our target we would hit Europe somewhere. As dawn broke we saw planes taking off so guessed that was Schiphol. It was but could easily have been Rotterdam!
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That sounds similar to my navigation skills at the time. I once developed a formula to determine distance off land from the estimated length of any fishing vessels encountered on the way. Also, you were probably fairly close to shore if you could hear dogs barking.
 
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andsarkit said:
BBC All in the Mind just now on navigating by waves and swell in the Marshall Islands. Fascinating skills now being lost.
All in the Mind
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See the book 'We The Navigators' by David Lewis (I'm sure there will be others, too) for a lot more info/insight on the topic. (I believe there's a pdf of the book downloadable from t'internet for cheapskates.)

The Pacific Islanders' techniques mostly wouldn't have been any use for the ancient mariners of coastal NW Europe, due to tides, islands/landforms and sea bottoms etc. affecting things, and I wonder what techniques and knowledge they had that have been lost.
 
Around the first dozen or so times I navigated yachts across the English Channel was using DR and EP. Great for using those foundation principles and understanding 'circle of probability'. This, of course, requires accurate log entries for course steered and distance travelled. Too much time at the chart table for most people now but I'm glad I learnt the hard way.

Insignificant though to wartime skills needed to fix a position of a minesweeper in Channel gales or in a freezing wet control room of a surfaced submarine in North Atlantic waters. Those guys were something else.

Respect as well for the post War RAF navigators changed with delivering very accurately and in the face of probably stiff opposition the Western deterrent.
 
capnsensible said:
Around the first dozen or so times I navigated yachts across the English Channel was using DR and EP. Great for using those foundation principles and understanding 'circle of probability'. This, of course, requires accurate log entries for course steered and distance travelled. Too much time at the chart table for most people now but I'm glad I learnt the hard way.
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Back then, though, you could see the coast from further offshore due to the wooly mammoths grazing on the clifftops. ;)

I, too, am glad that I learnt 'the hard way', and find it a little troubling that most people now feel the need to know exactly where they are (whether on boats, in cars or on foot) and are over-reliant on electronic naiads to be so.

Having traversed the Channel Devon to Brittany a few times single-handed by olde-worlde methods, I splashed out mid-90s and bought one of those new-fangled hand-held GPS gadgets. This ate expensive batteries at an alarming rate, so I'd only turn it on briefly a few times en-route to reassure myself I was approaching the bit of coast I'd intended.

One advantage was that it freed me from needing to approach the coast on the far side late before dawn so I could use lighthouses to confirm my general approach, but then soon have daylight to navigate inshore. Previously this didn't necessarily fit well with my wish to make the most of my previous limited time off work, and my crossing speed was somewhat unpredictable as my petrol outboard precluded motoring any great distance, meaning I was so much more wind dependent than today when I have the luxury of a diesel inboard (for which I can easily carry enough fuel for days, let alone hours).
 
Biggles Wader said:
The RN had very good GPS by 1991 as did almost every commercial/navy vessel. Different story when I first went to sea in the 1970s. Offshore navigation was all done the old way then and, not so well known now, we didn't have universal radio contact everywhere. No AIS of course and ships still used to disappear without trace occasionally.
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We had GPS on HMS Broadsword in 1985, but DECCA was still the source that was relied upon when out of sight of land. We never had to call on Danny Boy. :)
 
Remember chatting to a friend in the military . On the first Gulf War, they were scouring shops for GPS units for the troops. Not so much for the nav, but for the accurate timing.
 
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And, a friend read Lewis about Pacific nav by the early guys; Apparently they squatted and let their testicals touch the deck. Gave a more sensitive 'read' on the motion of the sea, allowing them to find islands more accuratly. Of course, no mention of the failure rate.
Said friend was going to give it a go it, having tried to sail an old local fishing boat from near OZ to the UK. Foundered by Chrismas Island..
 
MontyMariner said:
No RDF? I found it very satisfying to zero in on the lighthouses and plot my position.
I well remember my first time across getting a bit confused thinking that the glow of the power station was Cherbourg.
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I don't think that I ever got a fix that was any assistance, even with a later Seafix with digital tuning. My original Hitachi portable radio with a rotating aerial on top was good for a laugh, providing you weren't lost. I remember seeing an automatic RDF set in the RAF museum at Hendon from wartime that I was very jealous of.
 
DownWest said:
And, a friend read Lewis about Pacific nav by the early guys; Apparently they squatted and let their testicals touch the deck. Gave a more sensitive 'read' on the motion of the sea, allowing them to find islands more accuratly. Of course, no mention of the failure rate.
Said friend was going to give it a go it, having tried to sail an old local fishing boat from near OZ to the UK. Foundered by Chrismas Island..
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I hope the decks weren't too splintery!
 
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