Distinct Activities: Shackled by a Common Name?

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Its illegal for any commercial ship, or ship over 300 tons to play silly buggers with only paper charts. All must have AIS. AIS requires ECN.

So your method of doing what you think is navigating in my opinion is not navigating its just plain unsafe. Illegal and unsafe for the big boats and should be illegal on our size boat too.

I missed this one....

1. All ships 300gt to be fitted with AIS........Correct!

2. AIS requires ECN, i assume you are refering to Electronic Chart Navigation (ENC).....Incorrect! it does not. (My last Vessel was the Pacific Vulcan at 2277gt which has no electronic chart systems)

Also the introduction of AIS had nothing to do with paper charts..... <<

[GrowleyMonster]

Quite right. NO other hardware is needed for AIS operation other than a GPS which can be contained within the AIS unit. One can use the data right from the AIS display. You get a menu of AIS contacts, and you can select one for more in depth info. Also an AIS can be interfaced with an ARPA radar. AIS contacts CAN be shown on the ECDIS but neither ECDIS nor ARPA is not needed for the AIS to work as intended.

[Andrew Troup]

Just came across this:

"New Zealand Maritime agency has argued that: “GPS derived positions are a useful tool in determining a vessels position but should be used in conjunction with all other means of position fixing at the navigators disposal. The temptation to push a button to obtain such data and not utilize more labour intensive, traditional methods of position fixing is, to put it bluntly, bad seamanship that puts vessels and their crew at risk.

Maritime New Zealand is concerned at what appears to be a growing tendency for mariners to place excessive reliance on GPS generated data in place of traditional methods of navigation and issues a strong warning against such practise”

(Maritime New Zealand, 2006).

This was in reaction to some instances of actual misadventure. They were not just striking an abstract ideological stance.

It may be that legislators in other "more enlightened" jurisdictions, lawyers and insurance loss adjusters share the notion from post #2 that "playing silly buggers with paper charts" does not constitute navigation.
It does however puzzle me considerably that at least one sailor seems to.

Possibly the above group would also feel that using 'traditional' drum kit does not constitute drumming? After all, a drum machine is more accurate, versatile, obedient, convenient and tireless than any human drummer.
And there are health and safety issues with "traditional" drum equipment - ever rammed a drumstick up your nostril? I hope the manufacturers of such dangerous items have lots of liability cover....

I respectfully submit an alternative point of view: a drum machine is not another tool for a drummer to use: it's a tool for a non-drummer to use.

I would not make the same claim in regard to a GPS, because I personally think it is a valuable tool for a real navigator, if the limitations (which are almost all human-factor limitations, rather than technology limitations) are recognised, respected and actively managed.

But my point is that if that if GPS is the only tool or technique being used, then the sailor is no longer navigating.

It is not my intention to join in to a long-running argument, resurfacing yet again in this thread, where people take turns at highlighting the inadequacies of one form of navigation or another.

My only purpose is to suggest that in any particular case when a boat is underway, it is important to recognise who is doing what.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

Just came across this:
.

The warning came about following an accident. To the yacht Sanga-Na-Langa.

You can read the accident report here and make you own mind up about the mistakes made:

Accident Investigation Report Commercial Passenger Sanga Na Langa Waiheke March 2006 Maritime NZ - Maritime New Zealand

One interesting aspect was how far electronic maps have improved since the accident occurred in 2006
This was their electronic chart.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

Just came across this:

"New Zealand Maritime agency has argued that: “GPS derived positions are a useful tool in determining a vessels position but should be used in conjunction with all other means of position fixing at the navigators disposal. The temptation to push a button to obtain such data and not utilize more labour intensive, traditional methods of position fixing is, to put it bluntly, bad seamanship that puts vessels and their crew at risk.

Maritime New Zealand is concerned at what appears to be a growing tendency for mariners to place excessive reliance on GPS generated data in place of traditional methods of navigation and issues a strong warning against such practise”

(Maritime New Zealand, 2006).

This was in reaction to some instances of actual misadventure. They were not just striking an abstract ideological stance.

It may be that legislators in other "more enlightened" jurisdictions, lawyers and insurance loss adjusters share the notion from post #2 that "playing silly buggers with paper charts" does not constitute navigation.
It does however puzzle me considerably that at least one sailor seems to.

Possibly the above group would also feel that using 'traditional' drum kit does not constitute drumming? After all, a drum machine is more accurate, versatile, obedient, convenient and tireless than any human drummer.
And there are health and safety issues with "traditional" drum equipment - ever rammed a drumstick up your nostril? I hope the manufacturers of such dangerous items have lots of liability cover....

I respectfully submit an alternative point of view: a drum machine is not another tool for a drummer to use: it's a tool for a non-drummer to use.

I would not make the same claim in regard to a GPS, because I personally think it is a valuable tool for a real navigator, if the limitations (which are almost all human-factor limitations, rather than technology limitations) are recognised, respected and actively managed.

But my point is that if that if GPS is the only tool or technique being used, then the sailor is no longer navigating.

It is not my intention to join in to a long-running argument, resurfacing yet again in this thread, where people take turns at highlighting the inadequacies of one form of navigation or another.

My only purpose is to suggest that in any particular case when a boat is underway, it is important to recognise who is doing what.

We may be talking in circles, but here goes.

The purpose of the discipline of navigation is finding out how to get to where you want to go, while avoiding obstacles and hazards along the way. The key process in fulfilling that task is knowing where you are, in relation to where you want to go, and in relation to those hazards and obstacles.

For this, the killer application, the totally superior tool, which has no remotely comparable peer, is satellite position fixing. With a GPS and/or Glonass device, you can have position data accurate to a few meters updated more than once a second. Comparing this to celestial navigation or three point visual fixes or dead reckoning (the only other tools we have since the Loran system was taken offline) is like comparing a child's toy beach shovel to a JCB.

This is no kind of "drum machine"; this is of course what every navigator from the best in the world to the rankest beginner uses to find position.

Now, knowing your position in lat long is useless without knowing where you are in relation to where you are going, and in relation to hazards and obstacles. For this you need cartography of some sort or another. You can plot a GPS derived position on a paper chart, and this works well and has application in the modern world.

But if you digitize that chart and feed the position data into a device which will automatically show your position in relation to other objects on the chart, you now have a tool which does what a human cannot do -- update the position more than once per second, showing instantly where you are and how close you are to hazards and obstacles (and other things, and where you want to go as well). This is also a powerful tool which no navigator in his right mind would decline to take advantage of. It frees the navigator from carrying out mechanical operations to do other things of value, and greatly enhances his situational awareness. It would be counterproductive and in fact dangerous to decline to use these tools.

Now anytime you have a powerful tool which replaces a lot of laborious mechanical work you create a temptation to rely on a machine to do everything, and to fail to do those parts of the job which a machine will never do. Just because you've solved the problem of quickly seeing on a chart where you are without doing a lot of chart work, taking visual fixes, etc., doesn't mean you don't need to know anything about navigation and pilotage.

The main issue is the accuracy of charts. Whether they are paper or electronic, they cannot be totally accurate. And they go out of date as depths change, channels silt up, features change, navigation markers are moved around, new hazards appear, etc., etc., etc. Using more laborious means of navigation and working with paper charts, it's easier to remember that the chart is not infallible. But the task is exactly the same, and it's easier to keep electronic charts up to date, than it is paper ones. It's easier to keep a good lookout on a short-handed pleasure vessel if you have a good chart plotter doing the rote part of the job, instead of you having to keep your head buried in the nav table working out positions. It's easier to spend more time on the radar verifying the real positions of things, or taking a shot or two with a HBC, or keeping a better eye on the depth sounder. If we fail to do these things, it's our own fault, not the fault of our chart plotters.

And of course if the damned thing breaks down, as electronic things tend to do sometimes, it's certainly really good to know your chart work, and to know other means of determining your position.

You won't find professional drummers using drum machines. But you won't find a single professional navigator not using GPS's or chart plotters, not a single one, I think. So it's a false analogy, in my opinion.

[Andrew Troup]

Originally Posted by noelex 77

The warning came about following an accident. To the yacht Sanga-Na-Langa.

You can read the accident report here and make you own mind up about the mistakes made:

Accident Investigation Report Commercial Passenger Sanga Na Langa Waiheke March 2006 Maritime NZ - Maritime New Zealand

One interesting aspect was how far electronic maps have improved since the accident occurred in 2006
This was their electronic chart.

Hmmm - I'm not sure why you think that's an issue in this case. The report states
"The position of the rocks as displayed on the screen correlated with their position in NZ Chart 5324 which suggests the electronic chart was reasonably accurate."

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

Hmmm - I'm not sure why you think that's an issue in this case. The report states
"The position of the rocks as displayed on the screen correlated with their position in NZ Chart 5324 which suggests the electronic chart was reasonably accurate."

In these sort of accidents there are a lot of factors that have some bearing.
The woeful (by today's standards) chart plotter cannot of helped.

A modern chart plotter would have displayed far more depth information for example. Comparing the actual depth with the depth on chart may have alerted the skiper to a problem.
This does not mean that a modern, or any, chart plotter was necessary to avoid the rocks. The skipper made some simple mistakes. However a modern chart plotter would have increased the skippers situational awareness and would at least of helped avoid the accident. Modern developments like radar overlay could also have potentially alerted the skipper.

Of course so would just giving the rocks a bit more clearance, having a HH clearance bearing etc.

[Andrew Troup]

.....

Originally Posted by Dockhead

We may be talking in circles, but here goes.

The purpose of the discipline of navigation is finding out how to get to where you want to go, while avoiding obstacles and hazards along the way. The key process in fulfilling that task is knowing where you are, in relation to where you want to go, and in relation to those hazards and obstacles.

I agree entirely. I would only add "Trying one's utmost to avoid undesirable cross-talk or pollution between where you want to be, where you are, and where landmarks and dangers are"

For this, the killer application, the totally superior tool, which has no remotely comparable peer, is satellite position fixing. With a GPS and/or Glonass device, you can have position data accurate to a few meters updated more than once a second. Comparing this to celestial navigation or three point visual fixes or dead reckoning (the only other tools we have since the Loran system was taken offline) is like comparing a child's toy beach shovel to a JCB.

This seems to me to be based on the Liberace principle ("you can't have too much of a good thing", aka "building sand castles with a JCB):

Are you sure you're not privileging accuracy beyond the point where it's useful ?

A human is nowhere near as accurate, or as fast, as a drum machine. They are, however, plenty good enough.

Similarly, the accuracy of a three point bearing is more than good enough for almost any practical navigational purpose.

Furthermore, it can be used to tell you where you are in relation to actual, local dangers, rather than relying on the abstractions of prime meridian and equator. This can circumvent errors in charts.

This is no kind of "drum machine"; this is of course what every navigator from the best in the world to the rankest beginner uses to find position.

If they use it to the exclusion of all other tools, they might as well not have come on the trip, or sent a child: the machine does the job of position finding perfectly well without them. This is another point of similarity with a drum machine.

Now, knowing your position in lat long is useless without knowing where you are in relation to where you are going, and in relation to hazards and obstacles. For this you need cartography of some sort or another. You can plot a GPS derived position on a paper chart, and this works well and has application in the modern world.

But if you digitize that chart and feed the position data into a device which will automatically show your position in relation to other objects on the chart, you now have a tool which does what a human cannot do -- update the position more than once per second,

this starts to almost sound a teeny bit as if it came from a fanboy or marketer

I mean to say, we're not flying a Top Gun mission ... at least, I'm not...

showing instantly where you are and how close you are to hazards and obstacles (and other things, and where you want to go as well).

There are obvious human factor risks attached to an oracle which purports to provide accuracy, in your words, "to a few meters", when chart errors are sometimes two or even three orders of magnitude larger

It's like publishing a Japanese-style train timetable in, say, Britain. It's misleading to advertise when trains should leave down to the minute and second, if their actual departures are somewhat sporadic.

And it's hard to see where the revenue stream will come from to bring the charts up to snuff, except for the small subset of dangers relevant to well-travelled shipping routes.

This is also a powerful tool which no navigator in his right mind would decline to take advantage of. It frees the navigator from carrying out mechanical operations to do other things of value,

such as ...?

and greatly enhances his situational awareness. It would be counterproductive and in fact dangerous to decline to use these tools.

Not nearly as dangerous as it would be to use these tools to the exclusion of all others.
I think you're radically overstating the case, and I don't quite understand why.
You don't seem the sort of person to be flying such a flimsy kite quite so high, and I'm also not sure who's suggesting 'declining to use these tools'. I'm certainly not, and I've made that clear at least once on this thread.

Now anytime you have a powerful tool which replaces a lot of laborious mechanical work you create a temptation to rely on a machine to do everything, and to fail to do those parts of the job which a machine will never do.

Well put.

Just because you've solved the problem of quickly seeing on a chart where you are without doing a lot of chart work, taking visual fixes, etc., doesn't mean you don't need to know anything about navigation and pilotage.

The main issue is the accuracy of charts. Whether they are paper or electronic, they cannot be totally accurate. And they go out of date as depths change, channels silt up, features change, navigation markers are moved around, new hazards appear, etc., etc., etc. Using more laborious means of navigation and working with paper charts, it's easier to remember that the chart is not infallible.

Isn't it more important that the skills needed to remedy the defects of the charts are actually the traditional ones?
You can't move on top of each danger and get a GPS fix: you have to use hand-bearing compass and triangulation, or horizontal angles, or some such.

It's a tough test of character to keep those skills alive - what's the point of practicing your drumming when you have a drum machine?
- and many people don't even sit that test today.

Associated with the fact that position fixing is rendered trivial when far offshore, there's a new challenge for people doing long passages: boredom. And a certain diminution of accomplishment at the far end:

"Landfall? Oh jeez - that means I have to tidy my bedroom?"

But the task is exactly the same, and it's easier to keep electronic charts up to date, than it is paper ones.

Hmmm .... It's not necessarily so convenient to make your own durable electronic corrections, say to features which you discover (by 'traditional' methods) to be shown out of position, in comparison with correcting fluid and a pen on a paper chart.

More worrying, to me: If your plotter memory is corrupted or fails before you've backed it up,
you've lost that correction for keeps.

...or more likely, you forget to transcribe it when you overwrite that chart with an official update, or upgrade to the next generation, 'must have', improved electronic chart format.
I've still got chart annotations I made as an adolescent, showing reefs which still haven't made it onto any official charts half a lifetime later ... and I haven't had to transfer them once, let alone format-shift them

It's easier to keep a good lookout on a short-handed pleasure vessel if you have a good chart plotter doing the rote part of the job, instead of you having to keep your head buried in the nav table working out positions. It's easier to spend more time on the radar verifying the real positions of things, or taking a shot or two with a HBC, or keeping a better eye on the depth sounder. If we fail to do these things, it's our own fault, not the fault of our chart plotters.

And of course if the damned thing breaks down, as electronic things tend to do sometimes, it's certainly really good to know your chart work, and to know other means of determining your position.

Test of character, as above. There's nothing wrong with the technology IMO, it's the human factors which are the worry.

You won't find professional drummers using drum machines. But you won't find a single professional navigator not using GPS's or chart plotters, not a single one, I think. So it's a false analogy, in my opinion.

I may have a different understanding from you as to what constitutes an analogy.

I thought it was a contrasting situation with some striking similarities. You've pointed out a contrast, which happens to be the exact one I had already highlighted in presenting the analogy.

If there were no contrast, it would be an identical situation.

It seems to me that the point of the contrast -- and the value of a challenging analogy -- is to jolt one's thinking away from sclerotic positions.

[Andrew Troup]

Dockhead

Your post was so well argued that I felt impelled to engage with it, even though it meant abandoning my resolution not to join the -- to me, not particularly helpful -- general melee, whose primary purpose seems to be to "highlight... the inadequacies of one form of navigation or another."

I hope I've kept my emphasis on the inadequacies of how post-trad tech is often used, rather than the tech per se

I'm not going any further down this track, certainly not in public, but PM me by all means, if you want to take it further with me offline.

[goboatingnow]

If you don't want to debate the topic ( and I believe your point of view is quite frankly an insult to any serious navigator ) then please don't post. Nothing is more annoying them dropping a big sonorous post, then announcing you don't intend to debate the issue. Then X posts later drop in another sonorous post.

Sermons from pulpits don't add anything.

pS the drum kit is a ridiculous analogy. Try suggesting the same thing say with electric guitars.

The underlying premise that using GpS means you arnt navigating is just complete bunkum. Nor is the argument about comparing types of position fixing metholody The key is applying whatever tools are at hand to the job requirements properly.
There are problems with GPS they are problems with traditional methods. This is not the basis of the argument here.

I'm with Dockhead
Dave

[sailorboy1]

I'm just so confused on what really is being debated now. But I'll add something:

I just don't under the difference between following a paper chart or following a chart on your chartplotter. Either way you are probably following the same charted info.

If you are stupid and just blindly following a chart what difference does it matter what/where the chart is.

I will admit that a few years ago when I first started using a GPS chartplotter that I probably too stupid brave and would really sneak into a cove etc using the thing. But that was was a club boat, in other words it wasn't MY boat.

I still sneak into cove using the chartplotter but once in close I stop following the chartplotter and start following the depth gage (but I still looked at the depth contours of the chart).

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Don Lucas

I'm just so confused on what really is being debated now. But I'll add something:

I just don't under the difference between following a paper chart or following a chart on your chartplotter. Either way you are probably following the same charted info.

If you are stupid and just blindly following a chart what difference does it matter what/where the chart is.

I will admit that a few years ago when I first started using a GPS chartplotter that I probably too stupid brave and would really sneak into a cove etc using the thing. But that was was a club boat, in other words it wasn't MY boat.

I still sneak into cove using the chartplotter but once in close I stop following the chartplotter and start following the depth gage (but I still looked at the depth contours of the chart).

Just to remind people , heres what the OP said, about half way through the thread

Option A: do it yourself
Option B: get others to do it, and tell you the answer

Those "others" may be present on board, but more likely they're engineers, programmers, satellite technicians, mathematicians etc etc etc whom we will never meet. And they are "doing it" not in the sense that they work on the specific problem of our position, but in the sense that they've worked out how to do it in the general case, and how to make the fruits of their efforts available to us whenever and wherever we specifically require it.

Hence the issues at the centre of the debate, is that if you use GPS, you're not a navigator, hence the recent "drum machine" comment.( ie your not a musician) Most here are arguing that this contention has no validity, in that you can make mistakes or apply any information incorrectly, no matter where it comes from. Simply being able to put a sextant reading through a workbook and tables and derive a position in itself doesn't make you a "proper" navigator either

Dave

[sailorboy1]

So are we auguring on whether I/we shouldn't use a chart at all OR to use them?

Whether to do it yourself by dropping the sails, launching the dingy, rowing into the cove/harbor, dropping your lead line as you go all while towing the boat in?

Tell me seriously that this isn't the topic!

PS - hey I just noticed this was quality post number 5000 for me!

[goboatingnow]

the premise being advanced by the OP, is that in essence, if you "rely" on modern navigation methods, you arnt a real salty dog navigator. just as the premise was advanced that if you use a drum machine, your arnt a real drummer. The analogy is of course nonsense, but thats what is being advanced.

It is of course as has been demonstrated by dozens of posts here by many, doesnt ring true, in that GPS and or electronic chartplotting are merely tools. Its their use by a competent person that makes a true navigator

dave

[minaret]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

the premise being advanced by the OP, is that in essence, if you "rely" on modern navigation methods, you arnt a real salty dog navigator. just as the premise was advanced that if you use a drum machine, your arnt a real drummer. The analogy is of course nonsense, but thats what is being advanced.

It is of course as has been demonstrated by dozens of posts here by many, doesnt ring true, in that GPS and or electronic chartplotting are merely tools. Its their use by a competent person that makes a true navigator

dave

Dood, learn to read, go back, and read Andrew's posts again. He never at any point said that if you use GPS you "aren't a real navigator". Quite the opposite, he himself uses GPS and thinks it's a good tool. What he said, many times repeatedly (and I can't understand why some of you keep trying to act like it's not what he said), is that if you use GPS "to the exclusion of all other methods", you aren't navigating. That means if the only tool for navigation you have aboard and know how to use is a chartplotter with GPS, you aren't a navigator (or more accurately to me, a pilot). This is a statement I think most of us can wholeheartedly agree with, and I don't see why so many of you insist on turning this into an argument about whether paper charts are better than GPS, as no one ever at any point suggested that was the case. Any navigator worth his salt uses all tools available, and guess what, some of the tools available aren't electronic gizmo's, and do things that an electronic gizmo can't, like a simple pelorus. Or your knotmeter. Quit trying to accuse the guy of being some sort of luddite, based on a couple of posts you clearly misunderstood.