No paper charts for one off trip
- Thread starter jimi
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Ex-SolentBoy
Well-Known Member
Quite. I have been using GPS as my primary method of navigation in planes and boats for about 25 years. I have never experienced a position reception problem.
Well, actually there was one.
I was flying above cloud (very naughty) over Norfolk when all of a sudden the GPS bleeped and went blank. I hastily dug out the chart and pencil ready to do the whole thing manually.
I then realised that the GPS aerial, which was stuck onto the window with a suction cap had come unstuck and was lying on the floor under my seat.
Of course I told all my friends that I had been sabotaged by American GPS denial of service trials.
bbg
Well-Known Member
Sounds like enough redundancy to me, but if you're worried print some of the charts in a scale you like, from the electronic versions you have. My preference is to print double-sided on A3 then laminate.
ChrisE
Well-Known Member
James, I'm sure that you've posted this with your usual tongue in cheek but in off chance you didn't I side with not Luddite view. It's good enough for airliners and HM submarines so you should be ok. You've thought through the additional redundancy stuff.
Fwiw, we cruised for 2 weeks in Norway on electronic charts, with pc chart backup, gosh it can be done.
Fwiw, we cruised for 2 weeks in Norway on electronic charts, with pc chart backup, gosh it can be done.
lustyd
Well-Known Member
Your link clearly states that safety of life takes precedence so a quick call to the CG and jamming will be switched off. I would question qoing to sea at all if you find yourself that lost sailing up your own coast. Worst case just stay within sight of land and count off the ports! The worst that's likely to happen is that you'll catch a wrong tide somewhere like the mull of Gallaway and have a very unpleasant few hours.
fireball
Well-Known Member
I have the folio from ramsgate to chichester you can borrow.
When are you thinking of going?
When are you thinking of going?
DJE
Well-Known Member
That would be the link to the military jamming trials. The GLA report concludes thus:-
Conclusions
One can conclude that GPS jamming can significantly affect the
safety of maritime navigation and situational awareness for both
ship-based and shore-based systems.
The main effects observed from the two GLA jamming trials
are:
• Random errors are presented, leading to hazardously misleading
information that could, depending on the installation, lead a
vessel off course.
• Erroneous and potentially misleading data are presented to other
vessels and shore-based infrastructure.
• The sheer number of alarms on the bridge of the vessel could be
disconcerting and distracting for the mariner.
• GPS-fed systems are lost, which can create an unfamiliar bridge
situation and remove safety critical systems from operation.
• Situational awareness can be lost or made appreciably confusing.
The loss of GPS, or a lack of integrity in the reported
information, leads to an unfamiliar situation on the bridge. The
crews of the Pole Star and the Galatea were expecting to lose GPS
and had primed other systems so that they could navigate safely.
In real life, there would be no advance notice and the impact on
the crew would be more severe.
The GLAs recommend that mariners use all available means to
navigate safely and strongly support the need to create a resilient
means of providing position, navigation and timing information.
The jammer they were using was a simple portable transmitter powered by a car battery.
Very easy job for anybody who fancies causing a bit of mischief.
jimi
Well-Known Member
I' thinking of going sometime in August. Got the Ramsgate to Solent area charts, thanks.
My view is the pilot books (partic Scottish west coast Kintyre to Ft William) will be of more value than the charts. If I stop in Strangford and leave the boat there for a couple of weeks, the chart there might also be worth investing in.
Halcyon Yachts
Well-Known Member
I would personally feel a bit naked without them. A couple of passage charts wouldn't break the bank!
These guys are great: http://www.chartsales.co.uk/
Have a good trip!
Pete
D
Deleted member 36384
Guest
Why bother with any paper charts if you have the electronic angle covered, which you say you have.
The reality of the situation is that you will not have all the paper charts needed for all eventualities. You can though have them all digitally.
I have sailed the West Coast waters extensively, weekly, for a period of years. Most of the situations I have been in due to imprecise navigation may not have happened with a plotter and a full suit of digital charts. For example: -
- I got lost in the Kilbrannan Sound in fog. FFS you can not get lost in the Killbrannan Sound. However, I became so disorientated with log readings and depth contours that I forced the world to fit my assumption.
- I made an unscheduled stop at Gigha. Very high spring tide, ran over the corner of a headland based on visual pilotage and knocked a junk out my keel. Again a chart plotter would have given me a better reference.
- I hit Rathlin island instead of the Mull of Kintyre after I messed up my course from Barra Head. It would have been obvious on a plotter
The above examples have as their root causes in tiredness and rushing, and were preventable with what I had on board at the time. The point is, the paper chart can be considered obsolescent and inefficient technology if one has a good plotter system. Charts don't make you any safer.
It takes a lot for me to say that as I am old school but the facts are the facts. get your plotter systems and back ups established and you will be OK. Just keep a log of positions, a written passage plan of ports of refuge, with notes, and be able to calculate EP and course to sail just using arithmetic - whats it called - plain sailing: DLat, DLng etc (look it up I can't remember). Keep the tide and set data on paper.
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fireball
Well-Known Member
NP
I would probably aim for a couple of overview charts - even if just an A3 print off electronic versions - sods law says you'll loose power at the most inconvenient time ...
How long do you recon this little jaunt will take you then?
vyv_cox
Well-Known Member
I fully agree. When we set off cruising from Holland in 2004 i carried the full set of charts for the Atlantic coast as far as Bordeaux, plus a Garmin plotter. It soon became apparent that the plotter was used far more frequently and conveniently for all our navigation. The charts were on the table but rarely consulted.
Once in the Med we used planning charts and the occasional larger scale one, but again the plotter was almost our only navigation tool. We lost the GPS signal once, in the Bay of Naples, and learned later that this is a known area for poor or no reception due to jamming.
Since we arrived in Greece we have some folios for the Ionian and Aegean but I don't remember the last time they came out of the chart table, certainly more than three years ago. In addition to the plotter I have a hand held GPS, a phone that provides GPS, an iPad with the Navionics app and a laptop with an elderly chart program covering the whole world. I do not own a paper chart of the area we are now based in.
We log position, course, speed, etc every hour. If something went wrong with our electronic stuff, which seems highly unlikely, we could revert to traditional methods.
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jimi
Well-Known Member
NP
I would probably aim for a couple of overview charts - even if just an A3 print off electronic versions - sods law says you'll loose power at the most inconvenient time ...
How long do you recon this little jaunt will take you then?
I'm thinking some long legs interspersed with a couple of family holidays, so elapsed time probably about 6 or 7 weeks, but including a couple of 48 ish hour legs to "get" there.
Ex-SolentBoy
Well-Known Member
Ok, I will bite.
Please explain what these traditional methods are.
You said you had no printed charts at all. If all your electronics have failed how do you plot your position, or more importantly on what do you plot your position?
I am pretty much in your camp as I use electronics all the time, but if it all went to pot I would hate to have to draw a scale map from memory.
vyv_cox
Well-Known Member
Difficult to imagine how the plotter, iPad and laptop, each powered independently, could fail. If the gps signal failed, as it did in the Bay of Naples, we have a recent position and either of the options can show lat and long. We can plot positions ahead, so a bearing is readily available. In practice most of our navigation could be eyeball anyway, it isn't often that we are out of sight of land in the Aegean. No tides, of course, but it would not be difficult to estimate. Leeway is sometimes significant but usually catered for by eye.
Ex-SolentBoy
Well-Known Member
I would agree that it is hard for it all to fail.
However, my point is a simple one. If you have no paper chart at all then even if you do miraculously find out your longitude and latitude, or get a bearing off something it does you no good as you have nothing to plot it onto!
Of course if you know where you are because you are visually navigating and don't need a map then that's fine. I do not need a map to go from Yarmouth to Lymington for example.
I just want to know what these traditional methods are that do not use electronics or maps of any kind.
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Angele
Well-Known Member
I would agree that it is hard for it all to fail.
However, my point is a simple one. If you have no paper chart at all then even if you do miraculously find out your longitude and latitude, or get a bearing off something it does you no good as you have nothing to plot it onto!
Of course if you know where you are because you are visually navigating and don't need a map then that's fine. I do not need a map to go from Yarmouth to Lymington for example.
I just want to know what these traditional methods are that do not use electronics or maps of any kind.
I think the answer lies in posts number 16 and 17. DJE asked Jimi if he could mark position lines on the plotters and Jimi said he could.
If your boat's position is not marked on the plotter (because the signal has gone), but you can draw on the plotter a line from your last known position in the direction you have been sailing for the last x hours, and then do the same for tide, then you can construct an EP on the plotter itself. Same for course to steer. No need for paper charts.
A bit of a faf if, like on my Raymarine E series, you can only have one ruler on the plotter at any one time, but doable. (Not so good for 3 point fixes, though).
Ex-SolentBoy
Well-Known Member
Sorry, but I was referring to Vyv's post where he said he had no paper charts. He said that if his electronics failed he would revert to traditional methods.
I cannot think of any method that can be used with no paper and no electronics apart from the old Polynesian method of remembering the story of the passage of heavenly bodies. I wasn't aware Vyv was trained in that method.
I have more electronics on my boat than you can shake a stick at, but if they ALL stop working and you cannot see where you are, the fact that you knew your position and speed a few moments ago means nothing. If you have no means of plotting a position then you are stuffed. Allright, you may know you were a long way south of the coast, for example, and you may guess that if you travel in a certain direction for a certain time then you should arrive at land, but if you have never been there and will not recognise what you are looking at then you are once again stuffed, even if you didn't hit something along the way.
Of course, if you are happy to sail along in oblivion of where you are and then just feel your way in by sight and depth then that's fine. But, that's not a traditional method of "navigating" in fact, it's not navigating at all. It may be safe, but it's not navigating.
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lw395
Well-Known Member
Is the real question how much finger-pointing would go on if you came to grief with no charts?
Angele
Well-Known Member
I took it that Vyv's "if something went wrong with our electronic stuff..." was a comment about losing a GPS fix and not the whole thing going up in smoke.
Vyv describes several independent plotter systems (ok, not all may allow him to draw position lines). Provided at least one of these is operated from a separate battery supply to the others, then surely he will never be in a position where none of them work - excepting, possibly a lightning strike if he didn't stick them in the oven.
So, very similar position to Jimi's. At least that is the way I read it.