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 18, 12:50 -0400
From: Greg B
Date: 2014 Sep 18, 12:50 -0400
Whew! Sounds like the start of a
nautical Darwin Award.
~Greg
On 09/18/2014 12:11 PM, Bruce J. Pennino wrote:
~Greg
On 09/18/2014 12:11 PM, Bruce J. Pennino wrote:
This reminds me of an event many years ago in Chesapeake Bay......... We were in a medium size power boat, maybe 26 - 28 ft with compass, charts, etc. Baltimore and land in all directions were unseen in the haze/fog.A 12 –14 ft outboard power boat with 2 or 3 people pass nearby and shout.....”Which way to Baltimore?” We pointed in the correct direction and off they went. So many ways they could have gotten into a real jam!They had no life jackets, no radio, no compass; nothing except their fishing tackle.Bruce
From: Greg LicfiSent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 2:31 AMSubject: [NavList] Re: On Math and Navigation> 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
