Skipper mistakes Calais for Kent

Well - thats only true if you have a 360 degree compass.
As a boy I did woodwork at school and made the only 93 degree set square in existence - I think this is a similar issue really.

Isn't awful though - you get lost - a perfectly simple thing to do - you radio for a bit of a friendly word, help, guidance, advice - that sort of thing and suddenly you unwittingly launch yourself into the chocolates for the Maritime Plonker of the Year awards. This is why - when I'm lost - there's only me ever knows.
 
Not this guy, as I said above, he came via a few hours perched on the Whitaker spit with the seals, and had the Burnham RIB Lifeboat launched to him then.

I would guess that his plan was to follow the coast south until he reached, say, Southend pier, a quick dart across the Thames and then follow the North Kent coast to Ramsgate. This would work, provided you did not get too close to land, until you get to the Crouch. Somehow he got through the Spitway but his luck ran out on the Whitaker.

I wonder how he got from the Crouch out to the Sandettie? After all, a trip from the Essex rivers across towards the North Foreland, or Northern France, is tricky enough even when you know what you are doing.
 
When the error is that great a few degrees either way hardly matters, does it?

Either 180 or 190, how can anyone NOT notice such an error even before leaving the marina/mooring? Maybe he thought he was in the southern hemisphere!
 
prob one of those compasses where you read orientation from opposite side. It's hard to believe it was actulaly 180 deg out. I'd rather think it was operator error than that a compass could be that inaccurate
 
I was only referring to the press release in view of the previous postings dicussing the nonsense of the story quoting 190 degrees out (an impossibility).

I agree that one would expect anyone to know the direction of North from personal observation of one's surroundings, or the position of the sun. This guy should never be let out alone on the sea if he can't navigate and use his instruments. It could be that his compass had had it's polarity reversed, but that still doesn't excuse him.
 
Yes, if it's a bulhead compass like what I have got then E would be facing him when heading East, but I can see the W on the opposite side of the card, so he may have assumed the character facing him was where he'd been and the one forward of that was where he was going.
Does that makes sense, or am I being illogical?
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Either way he's a liability.
 
What type of compass ....

There is an old trick with a double gimballed flat steering compass of flipping the compass in its gimballs to make it read anything up to 180 deg out .... but it must be a compass with some heavy correctors fitted !!! to create the effect.

Second if it was mounted next to an electrical piece of equipment ... ?? I've done it in fact ... departed langstone hbr ... landed up in a small fog area outside the hbr ... looked at compass reading 180 ... so heading for Bembridge approx. Ran aground on east sand-bank outside Langstone ... couldn't understand how ... till I realised that I had placed my VHF ext. speaker on cabin top above the bulkhead steering compass .... when I moved it away ... it swung approx. 100 degrees ....
 
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