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Frank says:
> who's going to lose GMT in this century?? If your GPS is fried, and you've
> dropped your best digital watch overboard (and your three backup watches),
> but you still have a high-end digital camera, the best way to get GMT is to
> turn on the camera, press the menu button, and read the time from the
> camera's own internal clock.

As we seem to be onboard a boat, let me say what an
electronics-unfriendly place a small boat out at sea is.  I have been
on well-found yachts with 3 GPS units and have had all three
non-functional at the same time, for different reasons.  And those
digital watches, great as they are, need regular battery replacement.

 (Although about a month ago I found a new Casio that promises a
10-year battery life.  Sold.  Cost me about 50 bucks, although I paid
for it in dirhams.  At the moment the Pacific peso almost has parity
with the US dollar, so that's only a little more than US$50.  So far
it is gaining about a second every 2/3 weeks.  Fabulous value for
money.  But I digress.)

Laptop computers have inbuilt clocks too.  Crappy timekeepers, often -
how do they get away with it?  But a laptop kept fulltime onboard has
a life expectancy of a year or so.  Everything that can rust will.
Everything that can break down will.

It is so typical that you put to sea with all this you-beaut gear and
then watch it disintegrate in front of you, so before long you find
yourself effectively back in some other century.  Its part of the
charm of sailing, I guess.  Its a hard life for gear, and especially
hard for electronic stuff.

To my way of thinking it would be far too risky to rely altogether on
electronic gadgets for navigation.

Another aspect: I live in a big city; the biggest in the South
Pacific.  Almost anywhere else for many thousands of miles in every
direction is less well developed.  Many of these somewhat isolated
places are also the interesting locations to visit.  Once there you
are unlikely to be able to find anyone who can service sophisticated
electronics, or sophisticated anything for that matter. You would need
to sail all the way back to where you came from.

Nevertheless I'm a modern navigator.  I do, in practice, assume that
one way or the other I will keep track of the time.  One simple
practical way is ensure this is to enlist the assistance of all the
watches onboard (most people wear one) as potential navigational
timekeepers.  The methodology is simple: start and maintain a log of
the rate of gain/loss of all the watches.

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