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Arthur Pearson wrote:

> It is interesting to get an introduction to so many familiar voices on
> the list.  I have a ...

Yeah I think its nice too. We have recently sold our Top Hat 25. This is a
small tough ocean capable sailing sloop with a sweet hull, a pocket
cruiser. Over 5 years we (a family, together or apart) sailed it everywhere
we could get to, all along and into our convoluted coast (called a ria, a
flooded coast and series of estuaries), north and south and east of Sydney
(S34 E151), sometimes solo.  For nearly all that time navigation could be
done by eyeball, without any instruments, even the compass stayed in the
cupboard. By learning the chart and then visualizing how the place fits you
learn an 'instinctive' sense of orientation and sense of distance, etc.
Plus then and now we sail on as many other boats as we can as crew:
delivery runs up and down the coast to Queensland (S10-28 E140-155) or
Jervis Bay (S35 E152), races, jaunts across to Lord Howe (S32 E159) - we'll
sail to the opening of an envelope, almost literally, as a destination that
needs a long weekend to get there and back could be a band playing jazz
somewhere in a park on the water. Most other boats have GPS so they can
afford to be relaxed about my navigating efforts. On other people's boats
these are taken very seriously, I even regularly plot the GPS fix onto the
plotting sheet or chart. As I get an instant update on just how accurate
all the other methods are this is just great.  And if the GPS stops
functioning (as they do - could be a problem with the cable to the antenna,
for example, or a million other reasons) its even better.

To finish up the introduction, I have always found maths a difficult
challenge. While my daughter attended maths coaching (some things run in
families) I would take myself off to the public library and spend the same
time re-teaching myself basic trig. from her text book. The relevance of
this is: if I can navigate using CN (and every other method I can find)
then anybody can.

   

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