Ancient navigation

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Polux

You seem to put anything on a personal basis. They are not my toys but the navigation instruments of all modern ships and boats. On ships they are redundant and on boats if the sailor is a smart one they should also be, at least the GPS.

And then all Ship captains have not only to know how to navigate with GPS and modern electronic instruments but also with a sextant and paper charts. It is a part of their education and also needed to take the needed license.

I know that in what regards pleasure boats British and citizens of other countries can sail the Oceans without any license and many don't have any idea how to navigate without a plotter but on many countries a license to sail offshore implies knowledge of paper chart navigation and the use of a sextant and astronomical navigation. They are an essential part of the examination to take that license. It is the case in the country where you live.

Apologies.. I should have said.. One..
I also know that many/most Portuguese bypass the stringent requirements of their country which come in I believe 6 levels.. starting with a 3 mile limit from local port to level 6 which is ocean.. instead they opt for the easier and cheaper RYA Competent Helmsman or Coastal Skipper courses run in Lagos..
Methinks You take things to personally.. but that is your right..

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Methinks You take things to personally.. but that is your right..

^+1
But spare us from a flood of uploaded pictures at least once a week

[barnakiel]

I think re navigation Atlantic and Pacific are very different.

Atlantic is the easy ocean - distances are small, there is hardly anything to hit once you set off, and many islands and landfalls are tall.

Pacific seems quite the opposite - huge and with countless low places to hit, ground and perish.

b.

[JPA Cate]

Just a little footnote here, if you please.

In the Pacific, once you've lost sight of the cloud on the top of the tall mountains, you can't just stand up and see the island. For the low lying islands, they disappear as soon as you've sunk the palm trees beneath the horizon. I think the graphics depicting huge expanses of the ocean, with a straight line of travel on them could give someone who hasn't sunk continents below the horizon an erroneous idea of the navigation involved.

Furthermore, I confess to having had a "brain blooper"--the stick chart i mentioned pages back was, in fact, Micronesian, not Polynesian. Apologies for the error. The rest of the story is as I remember it. Those stick charts were not for sale, but was an honored gift, conveying thanks and respect.

Ann
.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Apologies.. I should have said.. One..
I also know that many/most Portuguese bypass the stringent requirements of their country which come in I believe 6 levels.. starting with a 3 mile limit from local port to level 6 which is ocean.. instead they opt for the easier and cheaper RYA Competent Helmsman or Coastal Skipper courses run in Lagos..
Methinks You take things to personally.. but that is your right..

You are mistaken about that and in fact Portuguese licences are mandatory to all that have permanent residence in Portugal and that may include you (or not).

Licences from other countries may be recognized as reason to grant the correspondent Portuguese licence without tests and examinations IF they were obtained in identical conditions as the correspondent Portuguese licences and correspond to the same knowledge level.

If you are a Portuguese resident you need a Portuguese licence, the one you have can be considered to correspond to the level of one of the Portuguese ones and in that case they will give you a Portuguese licence (without testing) corresponding to that level.

Anyway to have a licence that allows you to sail on the ocean, the last of several of them, you have to have a foreigner licence that covers astronomical navigation and that is not the case with RYA Competent Helmsman or Coastal Skipper courses, even if they would be convertible in Portuguese licenses, a thing that I doubt.

For having a Portuguese Ocean licence it takes a 6 month course, after having had all previous other licences and of course to pass a practical and theoretical examination.

Here you have the relevant legislation. It may be useful to you (Dec-lei 124/2004):
Legislação | www.ancruzeiros.pt

[Polux]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

^+1
But spare us from a flood of uploaded pictures at least once a week

Don't worry In 15 days I will go sailing and cruising and I will stop posting or will post very rarely for many months, as I use to do every year.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Polux

You are mistaken about that and in fact Portuguese licences are mandatory to all that have permanent residence in Portugal and that may include you (or not).

Licences from other countries may be recognized as reason to grant the correspondent Portuguese licence without tests and examinations IF they were obtained in identical conditions as the correspondent Portuguese licences and correspond to the same knowledge level.

If you are a Portuguese resident you need a Portuguese licence, the one you have can be considered to correspond to the level of one of the Portuguese ones and in that case they will give you a Portuguese licence (without testing) corresponding to that level.

Anyway to have a licence that allows you to sail on the ocean, the last of several of them, you have to have a foreigner licence that covers astronomical navigation and that is not the case with RYA Competent Helmsman or Coastal Skipper courses, even if they would be convertible in Portuguese licenses, a thing that I doubt.

For having a Portuguese Ocean licence it takes a 6 month course, after having had all previous other licences and of course to pass a practical and theoretical examination.

Here you have the relevant legislation. It may be useful to you (Dec-lei 124/2004):
Legislação | www.ancruzeiros.pt

Makes me glad to be English..
and happy I got my Spanish Patron de Barco when I did....
Having no desire to work in Portugal and seeing as I'm out of the country at least 6mths of the year its not a problem..
Cruising the Med.. or the West Atlantic coast..??

PS; may have to leave Portugal anyway if we exit.. which is looking more likely by the day.. may be time to head for the Caribe

[Polux]

Originally Posted by boatman61

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"][SIZE="3"]Makes me glad to be English..
and happy I got my Spanish Patron de Barco when I did....
..

I am quite sure that one will be accepted and they will give you without testing the correspondent Portuguese licence, corresponding to coastal Patron or Oceanic Patron, whatever the case.

However you should not let the Spanish licence expire because in that case you will get nothing. In Portugal if your licence is expired for 5 years it will be the same as having nothing. Spanish legislation is very similar so you should see if it is not expired and maintain it valid. It may be useful.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Polux

I am quite sure that one will be accepted and they will give you without testing the correspondent Portuguese licence, corresponding to coastal Patron or Oceanic Patron, whatever the case.

However you should not let the Spanish licence expire because in that case you will get nothing. In Portugal if your licence is expired for 5 years it will be the same as having nothing. Spanish legislation is very similar so you should see if it is not expired and maintain it valid. It may be useful.

Oh it is.. it allows me to work on boats on the hard where foreigner cruisers are not allowed.. that little blue book is gold..

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Polux

The max diagonal distance on the map posted on that article is about 650nm but the distance between the Islands are much smaller. The type of navigation they described following wave patterns that were identificable because they have been disturbed by the interference of Islands would only work if the Islands were not at a big distance.





When you talk about a 1000nm we are talking about much more than it was on the map on that article, you are talking about this:



Even so if we look at the part that was not on that map you will see that the way is full of Islands at relatively short distance one from another:



Regarding navigation, as I have said repetitively, yes they navigated the Islands of the some archipelago and nearby archipelago using the wave patterns disturbed by Islands as a way to orient themselves and yes that was a remarkable feat for a stone age people without navigational instruments.

What I have been said also is that this should not be confounded with oceanic navigation, out of nearby islands, were this type of navigation is not possible.

Yes they have reached faraway Islands like Easter Island but that was a migration not a navigation and Easter Island and other distant Islands after being colonized remained isolated for large periods of time (centuries).

Navigation is something that was made routinely by a culture and serves for linking frequently different locals, for trade or cultural interchanges.

Migration is something that was done several centuries apart between each migration and it happen when the land resources are exhausted and desperately measures have to be taken for survival. It implies an one sense voyage to a unknown destination.

Your position on this is pretty much as ridiculous as the creationists' absurd defense that "microevolution" happens while "macroevolution" does not. The paper I posted gave STONE COLD SCIENTIFIC PROOF that two way purposeful navigation between cultural centures AND CENTRES OF ARTEFACT MANUFACTURE occurred regularly INTER ARCHIPELAGO AND ACROSS DISTANCES OF THOUSANDS OF MILES.

Your absurd and utterly ridiculous idea that navigation even across hundreds of miles out of sight of land may be possible (within archipelagoes, and not ignoring the fact that it is PROVEN BEYOND DOUBT that deliberate trade navigation occurred between MULTIPLE ENORMOUS ARCHIPELAGOES in the Pacific, which finding and proof you of course completely ignored because it demonstrated you to be flat wrong), but somehow navigation across "thousands" of miles is in your flat assertion "not possible" is one of the most laughable things I have ever read on CF. If you are out of sight of land for one or two hundred miles, you are out of sight of land for one or two thousand. There is NO INTRINSIC DIFFERENCE. Your silly suggestion constitutes some of the weakest and most bankrupt backstroking I have ever had the amusement to witness. All it serves to do is show your complete ignorance of stellar and instrumentless navigation. Heck, I can teach EVEN YOU to navigate from Portugal to any specific island in the Caribean USING NOTHING OTHER THAN YOUR HANDS. Not even a compass. And I could teach you this in a few minutes. Your assertions show why it is of importance that you have neither practical knowledge nor experience of ANY ocean crossings, let alone a Pan Pacific crossing, since you show your ignorance in the most obvious possible manner. I could navigate back and forth between Fiji and French Polynesia, up to Micronesia, down to New Zealand, using no instruments whatever, right now, and with no further experience than what I have already: hundreds of nights spent studying the stars and their positions and movements relative to land masses in the Pacific, while actually sailing in the Pacific, just as did the ancient Polynesians. This is EXACTLY how the Polynesians did it, and your refusal to acknowledge that they even could have is nothing short of disgusting racial prejudice and a Eurocentric superiority complex. My accuracy may not be perfect, but it need not be, because these archipelagoes stretch for hundreds of miles as you have noted, and I have studied and practised the landfinding methods of the Polynesians, which DO WORK. I would, for example, use the Northern stars which lie along lines of celestial longitude, such as Menkalinan and Theta Aurigae, in concert with the pole pointing features of Cassiopeia, to estimate latitude by use of the (yes invisible, but can still be done with surprising accuracy, which of course you would have no idea about) Pole star BELOW the horizon, as inverse altitude is Southern Latitude and use the Magellanic clouds and the Southern Cross to the South to confirm my Northern estimate of latitude. I would also, of course, use the likes of the rising of Rigel, the orientation of Saggitarius and Scorpio, of Perseus, of Fomalhaut and particularly Achernar in the later part of the year to find New Zealand from the Tongas, among many other useful navigator's stars. I would of course also use the sun.

Your denial that this can be done does nothing more than underline your absolute ignorance of how it is so, compounded by your absolute ignorance of practical ocean sailing. And the rest is just down to cultural and racial prejudice.

I resolved on a previous thread not ever to bother engaging with you again, and in this thread you have reached a new low of obstinate lack of self perspective in dealing with a subject of which you plainly know nothing, but seek to conceal your ignorance and bolster whatever argument it is you refuse to let go of by stint of cherry picked Googling.

I regret breaching that resolve, except insofar as I have demonstrated that there are navigators (and yes, I am a PROFESSIONALLY EMPLOYED NAVIGATOR AND TACTICIAN who is flown around the world for my services in Ocean sailing and racing… see you at the Fastnet for a drink during the runup to the upcoming Newport to BDA if you want to discuss it further… oh wait) who knows that the kind of nonsense you here spout is merely done so out of ignorance, and my other purpose being to signal that fact to the navigators aboard the Hokulea (whose achievements deny your absurd assertions and whose skill and knowledge will, I have no doubt, outshine yours to the end of your GPS addicted days), and those others who correctly value the achievements of their contemporaries and their ancestors, that not all Western sailors and navigators are so ignorantly chauvinistic.

I will now and hence forth stick to that resolve and add you to my "ignore" list. Of course you will post some more nonsense below, attempting to shift the ground to save face as usual, and using the kind of "no true Scotsman" fallacy you did in your last reply to me above, and you're welcome to it. For my part, I've had just about all I can take of your BS. So you can reply away without fear or effective logic. Goodbye.

[Polux]

Damn, such a rude inaccurate and long post!!!! You really know very little about history and seem to think that everything that is posted on internet is true.

Again you distort what I said. I said that navigation between nearby Archipelagos was done in a regular basis, I said that navigation between far away places like Easter Island or New Zealand was not made on a regular basis and that those places remained isolated, some for many centuries.

This is not only on some sites on internet but is scientifically confirmed.

I posted one of the more interesting articles about research how the Polynesian navigation was made (posted previously by another poster) and it was clear that it was based on wave patterns distorted by the presence of Islands and atolls.

It is obvious that such a method, based on memory and the ability to recognize previously detected patterns cannot be used on open ocean far away from Islands and that is one of the reasons because far away locations that were populated during desperate migrations did not remain linked to their original places.

The other was the inability to sail against contrary winds and currents in a significant way. I posted also a paper published by ABC Science, a credible source, explaining why the migrations to some far away places were made only in some particular periods of time that corresponded to a change in winds and currents and how it was impossible those migrations (or any navigation) to be made out of those periods of time.

That obviously means also that those places could not be reached by Polynesians out of those periods of time and those were very small windows of opportunity, being winds and currents normally opposed.

"While some researchers have proposed Polynesians must have had much more complex canoes than have been found to date, Goodwin and colleagues suggest this was not necessary....
There were narrow windows of time between 1140 and 1260 AD where the winds allowed this, say researchers in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Winds favoured Polynesian migration › News in Science (ABC Science)

Bottom point: You should not believe in all that is posted on internet. Most of it is rubbish since everybody can post there. A careful analyses of the sources is needed for distinguish what is credible information and non sense.

Maybe even some believe in what you write

[FSMike]

Originally Posted by Polux

-----
Bottom point: You should not believe in all that is posted on internet. Most of it is rubbish since everybody can post there. A careful analyses of the sources is needed for distinguish what is credible information and non sense.-----

Polux, explain one thing to me if you would please: How did Hokule'a (see Hokulea.com) get from Hawaii to Florida by way of Australia, South Africa, and South America with many ports of call along the way?
Fair winds, fair currents, and good luck?
It is my belief that they navigated there.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by FSMike

Polux, explain one thing to me if you would please: How did Hokule'a (see Hokulea.com) get from Hawaii to Florida by way of Australia, South Africa, and South America with many ports of call along the way?
Fair winds, fair currents, and good luck?
It is my belief that they navigated there.

The same way Thor Heyerdahl navigated to the Polynesia on a life raft. After knowing the favorable currents and winds it is not impossible if the raft or boat does not come apart. But off course that proves nothing.

As you can see the boat they use has an improved rig and they know all that there is to be known about winds and currents, what they can do and what they can't.


In fact they have as rig an evolution of what today is used on Polynesia as if it was normal to consider a today's rig the same that was used 1000 years ago. The actual rig was improved by the contact with other types of rigs and by natural evolution of that rig through millennia.

It makes no sense to think that Polynesians had not their own cultural evolution in all aspects including navigation and boat design. The rig they use today, or on the last century, is just that, not the one they used 1000 years ago. It is a perfection of that one.

Fact is that due to the lack of drawings and scarce historical evidence very little is known about the boats that were used for 5000 years by the Polynesians on their migrations and even less in what regards rig detail.

What we know is where they come from and to where they migrate and the approximate dates (several century apart) where that took place.

We now also that several of the new populated lands remained isolated for centuries from the places where they had come for.

Regarding sailing without instruments years ago a guy circumnavigated in a boat without any instrument, not even a compass. And that proves what? That is possible knowing winds and currents and with knowledge regarding stars and other reference points.

The problem with the Polynesians regarded to sail upwind with the available technology, to places that could only be reached sailing upwind. And reaching there, going downwind, the impossibility to return to the places where it was only possible return going upwind and against currents.

That article referring the National Academy of Sciences as source explained how those migrations were possible and why they occurred in very precise periods of time, the only ones where that was possible (downwind), with the technology they had available.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by Polux

You should not believe in all that is posted on internet. Most of it is rubbish since everybody can post there.

Ipso Facto

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

[/B]

Your position on this is pretty much as ridiculous as the creationists' absurd defense that "microevolution" happens while "macroevolution" does not. The paper I posted gave STONE COLD SCIENTIFIC PROOF that two way purposeful navigation between cultural centures AND CENTRES OF ARTEFACT MANUFACTURE occurred regularly INTER ARCHIPELAGO AND ACROSS DISTANCES OF THOUSANDS OF MILES.

Your absurd and utterly ridiculous idea that navigation even across hundreds of miles out of sight of land may be possible (within archipelagoes, and not ignoring the fact that it is PROVEN BEYOND DOUBT that deliberate trade navigation occurred between MULTIPLE ENORMOUS ARCHIPELAGOES in the Pacific, which finding and proof you of course completely ignored because it demonstrated you to be flat wrong), but somehow navigation across "thousands" of miles is in your flat assertion "not possible" is one of the most laughable things I have ever read on CF. If you are out of sight of land for one or two hundred miles, you are out of sight of land for one or two thousand. There is NO INTRINSIC DIFFERENCE. Your silly suggestion constitutes some of the weakest and most bankrupt backstroking I have ever had the amusement to witness. All it serves to do is show your complete ignorance of stellar and instrumentless navigation. Heck, I can teach EVEN YOU to navigate from Portugal to any specific island in the Caribean USING NOTHING OTHER THAN YOUR HANDS. Not even a compass. And I could teach you this in a few minutes. Your assertions show why it is of importance that you have neither practical knowledge nor experience of ANY ocean crossings, let alone a Pan Pacific crossing, since you show your ignorance in the most obvious possible manner. I could navigate back and forth between Fiji and French Polynesia, up to Micronesia, down to New Zealand, using no instruments whatever, right now, and with no further experience than what I have already: hundreds of nights spent studying the stars and their positions and movements relative to land masses in the Pacific, while actually sailing in the Pacific, just as did the ancient Polynesians. This is EXACTLY how the Polynesians did it, and your refusal to acknowledge that they even could have is nothing short of disgusting racial prejudice and a Eurocentric superiority complex. My accuracy may not be perfect, but it need not be, because these archipelagoes stretch for hundreds of miles as you have noted, and I have studied and practised the landfinding methods of the Polynesians, which DO WORK. I would, for example, use the Northern stars which lie along lines of celestial longitude, such as Menkalinan and Theta Aurigae, in concert with the pole pointing features of Cassiopeia, to estimate latitude by use of the (yes invisible, but can still be done with surprising accuracy, which of course you would have no idea about) Pole star BELOW the horizon, as inverse altitude is Southern Latitude and use the Magellanic clouds and the Southern Cross to the South to confirm my Northern estimate of latitude. I would also, of course, use the likes of the rising of Rigel, the orientation of Saggitarius and Scorpio, of Perseus, of Fomalhaut and particularly Achernar in the later part of the year to find New Zealand from the Tongas, among many other useful navigator's stars. I would of course also use the sun.

Your denial that this can be done does nothing more than underline your absolute ignorance of how it is so, compounded by your absolute ignorance of practical ocean sailing. And the rest is just down to cultural and racial prejudice.

I resolved on a previous thread not ever to bother engaging with you again, and in this thread you have reached a new low of obstinate lack of self perspective in dealing with a subject of which you plainly know nothing, but seek to conceal your ignorance and bolster whatever argument it is you refuse to let go of by stint of cherry picked Googling.

I regret breaching that resolve, except insofar as I have demonstrated that there are navigators (and yes, I am a PROFESSIONALLY EMPLOYED NAVIGATOR AND TACTICIAN who is flown around the world for my services in Ocean sailing and racing… see you at the Fastnet for a drink during the runup to the upcoming Newport to BDA if you want to discuss it further… oh wait) who knows that the kind of nonsense you here spout is merely done so out of ignorance, and my other purpose being to signal that fact to the navigators aboard the Hokulea (whose achievements deny your absurd assertions and whose skill and knowledge will, I have no doubt, outshine yours to the end of your GPS addicted days), and those others who correctly value the achievements of their contemporaries and their ancestors, that not all Western sailors and navigators are so ignorantly chauvinistic.

I will now and hence forth stick to that resolve and add you to my "ignore" list. Of course you will post some more nonsense below, attempting to shift the ground to save face as usual, and using the kind of "no true Scotsman" fallacy you did in your last reply to me above, and you're welcome to it. For my part, I've had just about all I can take of your BS. So you can reply away without fear or effective logic. Goodbye.

Wise. No part arguing with the inexhaustible supply of hot air. He will just bury all posts that don't agree with his in several pages of repetitive posts with no actual content every time anyway. A waste of effort to respond directly, just state your opposing view and move on, even though you know it'll be immediately buried in BS.