Danger, & Escape Bearings - Who still plots them, & how?

[gamayun]

Great question and love the responses! I still haven't anchored that often, so it's super to have the voices of experience.

[estarzinger]

As someone mentioned above . . . the 'breadcrumb track' of your entry (on the plotter) is quite useful for an unexpected exit, and was my main tool in regards to the thread topic once the technology settled.

If there was any complexity beyond a straight shot exit, I would look at the bread crumbs and put waypoints in at the key turn points. That made shooting for those points easy, and saved their positions if I had the plotter on long enough to overwrite the breadcrumbs (I used it as an anchor alarm in high winds also).

I can only remember this being really useful once. In the Tonga Ha'apai group (middle group) we anchored one night in a coral maze, which was well protected from all directions except the west, and of course at 2am a front came thru and we had strongish westerly winds, strong enough I did not like the wave size when we were backed up on on coral and the holding was not so great. The exit to the maze had two 90 degree turns in it and of course we could not see the coral/water color. We debated whether it was more risk to stay or to exit, and decide to go and it worked out just fine but of course I have no idea if we missed disaster by inches by luck.

[Nauticatarcher]

Always record and save a track on plotter when going in to a new anchorage, gives me something to follow if needed

[UNCIVILIZED]

Guys, thanks for all of the great responses. Hearing how others do things often helps to add skills to my personal nav toolbox. Plus it's good to hear that not all navigation is being handed over to the electronic gadgets that are in common usage

The idea of a recce of the area prior to dropping the hook is a great one. It's one of the most basic, & kind of 2nd nature to more seasoned sailors, & will never lose it's value. The tip about scanning for derelict boats is a good one, & sometimes the only way to know that a boat's been there for extended periods is via the bottom growth that shows itself as she rocks back & forth. And when I'm watching this, the way the waves move in an anchorage also gives me something of a real world sense of the bottom contours. In much the same way one judges swells when making dinghy landings on an unfamiliar beach, or when surfing. And this is especially true & important to note when weather comes in, & at low tide, as it's all the more evident then.

Originally Posted by Lepke

I like remote places and anchor where few others if any anchor. Usually small, difficult to enter rocky coves. Some I check out with a small boat to make sure the big boat will make it. Places I intend to return to, I print out a blowup of a raster chart and plot with sextant angles safe anchor and depths places and if the channel is tight, plot landmarks and bearings to enter and exit along with rocks to avoid. I've found GPS doesn't work up close all the time.

Lepke, when you say sextant angles, are you meaning that you shoot vertical bearing angles to various elevated fixed landmarks in an anchorage in order to fix your position, along with tracking your boat's route through passes & such via this method? It would make sense given the geography & topography of the areas your profile has you as sailing in.
Kind of a cool (advanced) technique, especially at night & such. But the math don't lie. Meaning that it's definitely a valid way of doing things.

Dochead, I'm a fan of pilotage notes too. Old habits & all that. Whether they're in a notebook that's at the nav desk, or one which fits well into a WT clear pouch, or the pocket of my foulies. And I'm a big fan of Rite-in-The-Rain paper/notebooks, as well as grease pencils & plastic slates. Or even several pages of clear mylar used as "paper" on a clipboard. Sometimes used in conjunction with electronic nav gear.

Military pilots learn how to navigate on a small clipboard, with notes & charts, affixed atop one thigh via elastic bands. Something I need to brush up on. But it's a good size for pilotage notes, & nav references, in addition to the other bits above. And you can purchase or get ring binders or binders that use paracord to secure all of your notes into the thigh top nav book in whatever order you prefer. Plus said notebook will often fit well inside a large pocket. And it has secure stowage (elastic bands) for variouss colored pens, pencils, & grease pens. Along with a small LED flashlight on a lanyard, ditto a small hand bearing compass, if naught but a Silva orienteering type.

Thanks again for all of the tips, it's helped me to pull a few tools from the dusty recesses of my brain!


PS: For those that are interested, there are products available for waterproofing charts & maps, like Map Proof. Which it also has the perk of adding a lot of tear strength & abrasion resistance to any paper you apply it to. There are others as well.

[Benz]

"Dochead, I'm a fan of pilotage notes too. Old habits & all that. Whether they're in a notebook that's at the nav desk, or one which fits well into a WT clear pouch, or the pocket of my foulies. And I'm a big fan of Rite-in-The-Rain paper/notebooks, as well as grease pencils & plastic slates. Or even several pages of clear mylar used as "paper" on a clipboard. Sometimes used in conjunction with electronic nav gear."

I have a nice, dry, smooth spot above the compass on the cabin wall where I can write notes and bearings with a dry-erase marker. Keeps notebooks from being lost or drenched, and I can see them and the compass at the same time. I've written watch orders there before, so the helmsman (usually me) can't forget.

[Suijin]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

And I'm a big fan of Rite-in-The-Rain paper/notebooks, as well as grease pencils & plastic slates. Or even several pages of clear mylar used as "paper" on a clipboard. Sometimes used in conjunction with electronic nav gear.

Military pilots learn how to navigate on a small clipboard, with notes & charts, affixed atop one thigh via elastic bands. Something I need to brush up on. But it's a good size for pilotage notes, & nav references, in addition to the other bits above. And you can purchase or get ring binders or binders that use paracord to secure all of your notes into the thigh top nav book in whatever order you prefer. Plus said notebook will often fit well inside a large pocket. And it has secure stowage (elastic bands) for variouss colored pens, pencils, & grease pens.

If you have a Navpod or similar, it makes a great whiteboard for use with grease pencils. I use it for all kinds of temporary notes; bearings, engine run time (I don't have an hour meter), wind dir/speed notes and all sorts of stuff that gets transferred to the log or not. It's the equivalent of my "refrigerator white board". Wipes right off with a rag. Just don't write on a surface that you may brush against and delete your notes. I keep a grease pencil in a holder fashioned from a tube of PVC taped to the helm guard.

[conachair]

Been a while on both counts, can't remember the last time I wrote down clearance bearings to get out in a rush, any kind of tide running in the anchorage they wouldn't be that reliable anyway. These days as opencpn on a Pi and xperia tablet has proved so reliable it would be follow the in track out again.
Same with pilotage notes coming in, tricky tidal coasts then more than likely a passage plan would have been done & written down (been a while, keep the land to the left or right is usually ample ) but as for getting into port then days/weeks before would have been spent looking for blogs etc on the web & pouring over google earth images and putting navionics/google earth images into opencpn to see how they tally up with cm93 & any other charts you can get hold of. Street view can be handy as well to get a view from the shore - anything and everything to get it a bit in your head what it actually is like. Google earth is great to see where the other boats really anchor & maybe track down where to land in the dinghy.

[Kenomac]

We anchor all season and have been doing it for six years, and NO we don't pre- plan an escape route. I have other things to occupy my time. With three ipads and two iphones onboard, I seriously doubt they'll all let us down at the same dark moment, and if the entire gps satellite system was to collapse, then I'm assuming we'd also have bigger problems to deal with. And besides, in an emergency the other people anchored nearby will screw up your pre-planned escape route anyway, and we have the track of our way-in saved on the ipad chart plotters.... just follow it back out.

Most of this just seems like ridiculous talk talk and unnecessary planning.

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

Lepke, when you say sextant angles, are you meaning that you shoot vertical bearing angles.

I would guess he primarily meant horizontal angles. 'back in the day' there were all sorts of rules of thumb and applications for horizontal angles in coastal navigation. Vertical angles could be useful but were rather more limited in practical application. I personally dont see either as likely being all that useful in the 'unexpected night (or low viz) exit' scenario.

Of the 'old school' tool kit, the procedure/tool that I continued to find most useful into the 'electronic age' was leading lines. It gives you a way to stay on very very accurately on a route line, even if there is current, without having to fuss with any gadget at all (not even a compass) Useful for entry into very small, possibly less well charted places - there are painted rock piles pairs set up by cruisers in many such places (quite common thru scotland and ireland) to provide safe leading lines. But again, in an unexpected night or low visibility exit they may or may not be usable.

[Seighlor]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Most of this just seems like ridiculous talk talk and unnecessary planning.

There's always gonna be one.

I thought it was a good question with (mostly) interesting responses.

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by Seighlor

There's always gonna be one.

Technically there was more than one person that said they simply rely on their electronics. I plot a course in and rely on that if I have to.

One does have to consider how 'real world' this scenario is. IF one needs to record and plot an escape route, the assumption is the visibility is limited (rain, fog, dark night). Under what conditions would you want to escape an anchorage?

Weather? The weather won't be better in open water.

Limited visibility? If the electronics are down and you have limited visibility are you really going to start working off of hand notes and compass bearings? Again, this is an 'escape plan'.

If the weather is bad, visibility is poor and the electronics are down, are you really going to pick up anchor and move out of the area?

Picking up anchor and resetting is another thing entirely and doesn't require an 'escape plan'.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

Of the 'old school' tool kit, the procedure/tool that I continued to find most useful into the 'electronic age' was leading lines.

Indeed and easy to forget about these with modern chart plotters. Portsmouth Harbour in the Solent used to have a superb one which guided you through a gap in a sand bank saving several miles going the long way round. A monument lined up with a church in the back ground as the marks, just perfect, until someone went and built a tall block of flats in front of it

Another trip off the Newtownards Pennisular for a dive saw us looking for a wreck which hadn't been dived in years. However, one old chap in the club swore he could remember the transit lines. Out we went a couple of miles off shore looking for a disused windmill and a telegraph pole in the back ground. An hour later and nothing before it dawned on said old chap that the woods that we were looking at had grown up since he was last there. We found the wreck eventually, with the aid of a good fish finder.

[daletournier]

I jot the a compass bearing down .

I had to leave a very restricted anchorage in the phillipines in the pitch dark . The thing with the chartplotter is, if your crawling out slowly which is best with zero vis then that little red boat on the charplotter dosent change direction regularly enough.

Its very easy to be disorientated in the extreme dark, its not a nice feeling, i van see how some could panick.

Im a modern technologhy navigator but after that experience i like to have a bearing.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Indeed and easy to forget about these with modern chart plotters. . . .

We may debate about paper vs electronics, but I don't think there can be any reasonable question about the necessity of paying attention to physical navigation marks -- buoys and leading lines, or "ranges" as we sometimes call them.

I’ve told this story before, but it may be worth telling again –
We got our very first chart plotter – I don’t remember the year. It must have been about 2000 or 2001. It didn’t come with cartography, so we borrowed a “chip” from a friend of my father’s, which covered maybe 200 miles of coast. I was excited to be able to instantly see where we were on the chart, rather than having to plot it. And the very first day, we had to get through a narrow, unmarked pass between barrier islands which had always given me fits – a few meters off track and you’re aground, and there are strong currents there. Going through this spot, I had always used an ad hoc visual transit between one tree ahead and one buoy out to sea behind us, looking back and forth. But now I had a PLOTTER! So I put my head down in the plotter, and rejoicing in the real time automatically plotted view, drove the boat through the pass.

And ran hard aground The channel had been moved by a recent hurricane, and there were actually a couple of buoys there showing the new way through, which I had not noticed in my fascination with the new plotter.

My very first time using a chart plotter. A hell of a lesson.

We should all, all of us, be looking at and understanding all the navigational marks, including ranges. You should never just drive the dot on the plotter -- that's not navigation.

[estarzinger]

I might comment that a 2017 update/rewrite of Bowditch was released. It is the (free) bible outlining pretty much all 'standard' navigation (now updated to include a bit more modern perspective while preserving the 'old school'). This is both the benchmark excellent reference for specific questions and late night reading when you want to learn something useful while falling asleep

Can download sections or full book here

On horizontal angles (and vertical) the old usability 'trick' was using specific angles which could be 'eyeballed' rather than having to make precise measurements. A few of the main ones are outlined here. There is a semester worth of additional "angular trick's" if one cares to look, but they don't get much use today.