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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: The perils of going to sea relying on a minimum of modern electronics
From: Bill Lionheart
Date: 2017 Mar 3, 19:46 +0000
From: Bill Lionheart
Date: 2017 Mar 3, 19:46 +0000
I have just read the MAIB report (thanks for link) Petunia Seaways was travelling too fast in "zero visibility". Pegotty had no radar reflector. Both seem to have forgotten how to do fog signals! Perhaps the mast down was also the reason the VHF was not working so well. Nothing to do with iPads On 3 March 2017 at 18:33, Frank Reedwrote: > Lu Abel, you wrote: > "Here's another (and possibly better) report of the incident from a > commercial marine oriented [gCaptain]" > > But why go there? Did you miss my posts last night that included the > official report (here)? Go to the source! Some blogger working for gCaptain > is no more and no less: just some blogger working for gCaptain. That blogger > has no special knowledge here, and it appears to me that the reporting was > influenced by the techno-phobic tabloid coverage rather than being derived > from the actual official report. > > And you wondered: > "Is it possible that the skipper was using a WiFi connected GPS rather than > having an internal GPS in the iPad? I know you can buy "hockey puck" GPS > units with a USB cable to connect to your computer; the existence of a WiFi > (or Bluetooth) version would not surprise me." > > Anything is possible, but why would this be relevant in any way? Such a > device would not fail as they moved away from shore. It's not significant > anyway. The MAIB report barely mentions the iPad, but it does note that it > was not the skipper who was using it but rather his passenger, who was a > representative of that prospective buyer whose schedule they were rushing to > meet. The reporter notes that the skipper believed that he could navigate > visually based on a line of buoys. It also notes that he believed the fog > would burn off soon. The primary navigational methodology that he was > depending on was traditional navigation and piloting. He also had a > fully-functional stand-alone GPS unit as well as paper charts on which his > passenger successfully plotted their position and saw that it was in the > shipping channel immediately before the collision (the official report did > complain that they didn't have proper plotting tools but come on --anyone > with basic skills can plot a GPS position on a chart without tools). The > skipper wasn't relying on the iPad though they may have had a false sense of > security before departure that the iPad's AIS app could alert them to > shipping traffic (of which there is plenty on the Humber Estuary. > > Frank Reed > > -- Professor of Applied Mathematics http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/bl