Ocean nav

[zoidberg]

Those with an eye on far horizons might well be interested in this, which is 'hot off the press'

It tells me that next time I find myself heading in the direction of The Azores, I need only sail west until I come to the fourth blue line... then follow that south until I sight the islands.

 

[Baddox]

Ah-ha, so that's how they work. Like lines on a swimming pool floor to follow.

 

[sarabande]

That reminds me of when super accurate GPS was first available, some skippers would put in a buoy with great precision, and be surprised to meet other boats coming the other way. Precisely.

I do like the idea of a queue of saily boats run̈ning in a coordinated fashion up and down the lines of iso Mag Dec.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Halley (he of the comet!) did the first research into mapping the Earth's magnetic field; he was interested in using it as @Wansworth suggests as an aid to navigation in the days before precise clocks or lunar tables were available to enable the determination of longitude. See Edmond Halley - Wikipedia

 

[Sandy]

The Magnetic Field making life easy for UK sailors.

 

[Roberto]

That reminds me of when super accurate GPS was first available, some skippers would put in a buoy with great precision, and be surprised to meet other boats coming the other way. Precisely.

Or catamarans trying hard to free themselves from such buoys stuck between the hulls

 

[Stemar]

That reminds me of when super accurate GPS was first available, some skippers would put in a buoy with great precision, and be surprised to meet other boats coming the other way. Precisely.

I do like the idea of a queue of saily boats run̈ning in a coordinated fashion up and down the lines of iso Mag Dec.

IIRC, there was a big mobo on delivery that ran into a rather large buoy for the same reason, and sank. It turned out that the skipper's insurance didn't cover commercial work (can't remember the details), but it wasn't a good outcome for him. It happened round about the time I got my first GPS, so I was careful to put my waypoints 50m to one side of the buoys, though the outcome would have been a lot less dramatic in a Snapdragon!