NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: On Math and Navigation
From: Greg B
Date: 2014 Sep 17, 22:23 -0400
From: Greg B
Date: 2014 Sep 17, 22:23 -0400
> On
09/17/2014 09:11 PM, Brad Morris wrote:
> And in a sense, you are correct.
> Hundreds of navigators have applied the standard techniques sketched above without deep mathematical
> understanding and have successfully navigated from port to port. Its helpful to have a deeper understanding
> (some more than others) but its not a requirement.
> Have fun!
> Brad
Brad,
I would go one further and say for 125 years thousands of navigators successfully navigated from port to port with only one good 'noon sight' & 'time site' each day.
And the reason they were so successful was they marked their position on a charts and were meticulous in their Dead Reckoning and log keeping.
I bring this up because without fastidious Dead Reckoning & logging you are lost in between fix s. I teach boating safety with the CG Aux and it blows my mind
to see people leaving the dock without a weather briefing, or paper charts, and every once in a while with out a gps either. I actually had a power boater from CT. pull up
to my sailboat at the beginning of the season and had this exchange: "a what harbor is this?" "Huntington, where are you going?" "Oysterbay" "got a chart I'll show you"
"no" "what does your gps say?" "don't have it on board" I'm a cfi and Master 50 ton and if I ever had an exchange like that the FAA or CG would put my credentials through
a shredder! BTW: someone mentioned Sumner - I think his DR error for the 600 mile leg of the trip he 'discovered' LOP's on was 30 miles or 5% West of his actual position.
So he might have made Smalls light regardless - just more apprehensively.
My $0.02 ~Greg
> And in a sense, you are correct.
> Hundreds of navigators have applied the standard techniques sketched above without deep mathematical
> understanding and have successfully navigated from port to port. Its helpful to have a deeper understanding
> (some more than others) but its not a requirement.
> Have fun!
> Brad
Brad,
I would go one further and say for 125 years thousands of navigators successfully navigated from port to port with only one good 'noon sight' & 'time site' each day.
And the reason they were so successful was they marked their position on a charts and were meticulous in their Dead Reckoning and log keeping.
I bring this up because without fastidious Dead Reckoning & logging you are lost in between fix s. I teach boating safety with the CG Aux and it blows my mind
to see people leaving the dock without a weather briefing, or paper charts, and every once in a while with out a gps either. I actually had a power boater from CT. pull up
to my sailboat at the beginning of the season and had this exchange: "a what harbor is this?" "Huntington, where are you going?" "Oysterbay" "got a chart I'll show you"
"no" "what does your gps say?" "don't have it on board" I'm a cfi and Master 50 ton and if I ever had an exchange like that the FAA or CG would put my credentials through
a shredder! BTW: someone mentioned Sumner - I think his DR error for the 600 mile leg of the trip he 'discovered' LOP's on was 30 miles or 5% West of his actual position.
So he might have made Smalls light regardless - just more apprehensively.
My $0.02 ~Greg
