Distinct Activities: Shackled by a Common Name?

[wolfenzee]

I have never actually heard someone say that electronic navigation is infallible because every system on a boat will at sometime fail.....though I have known some that were confident enough in there electronics to have all thier paper charts and "analog navigating equipment" removed (or never have learned how to work it in the first place)

[Pelagic]

The majority of the last 2-3 pages of posts made the OP’s point that a separate discussion section about old traditional navigation techniques…is needed!
Let’s call it “History of Navigation”… and hopefully it will keep out those who want to get into an electronic pi$$ing contest.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

LOL.

That's another one of my favorite places! But not depicted in that photo. Notice the anchor light is on? That was made in Havalet Bay, Guernsey, planning the crossing to Lymington, the evening before

Is that our boat "Orinoco" in the background?

Ken

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Is that our boat "Orinoco" in the background?

Ken

Indeed!

[GrowleyMonster]

Originally Posted by Jammer Six

Because I may be able to learn from them.

Indeed! I have learned a lot about OCPN here, for instance.

I like electronic charting, electronic navigation, etc. I just want my more traditional methods available for backup and also for the joy of just doing it and keeping skills fresh.

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

The majority of the last 2-3 pages of posts made the OP’s point that a separate discussion section about old traditional navigation techniques…is needed!
Let’s call it “History of Navigation”… and hopefully it will keep out those who want to get into an electronic pi$$ing contest.

+1....

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by IslandHopper

+1....

+2.....

It will be the most unread forum on the forum.

Just like yesterdays thread where someone wanted to start a celestial exercise and the response was..... Close to zero.
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ice-94895.html

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by David_Old_Jersey

For me "Navigation" is the art (and science!) of using whatever you have to get from point A to point B - without hitting Point C, D or E!

IMO a good Navigator is someone who neither has an attack of vapours when unable to know (or believe they know!) where they are to 3 decimal places.....nor are wedded to any single method or Nav Tool (whether a bleeping gizmo or a pencil!).

In ye olden days (pre GPS!) Navigation was the art of being comfortable when lost (at least it was in my world!)......the concept of not actually needing to know where you are 24/7 is perhaps not something that many in modern days are comfortable with (or can cope with?).

LOL..... best analysis to date..
It aint no big deal getting from a to b... and pilotage is restricted waters work... thats why pilots were created... local knowledge.
However navigation from memory is something else...
I navigate from the UK to Portugal/Spain fairly often and rarely need to touch a chart.. the headlands, capes and marks are as familiar as Poole harbor used to be...
However I do carry charts as it has been known for me to be pushed onto hostile shores and a secondary ports layout needs looking into...
I also have a notebook with opencpn for reference and sadly its becoming more and more important as physical nav marks disappear to be replaced by GPS points as cutbacks bite deeper.
The Thames estuary used to be a maze of red, green and white lights leading one through the various sandbars and rocks... now theres maybe 10 at the most.. in the main shipping channel... and the old cuts are likely silting up.
But its great fun and a definite challange creeping across...

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by Tingum

Whenever I am doing a delivery with owners onboard I pull the fuse on the GPS and then watch them panic. Good start for a class on dead reckoning.

Great instructional tool! I take a first time flight instruction student up and kill the engine and then ask"what do we do now"? Most say look for a place to land ...wrong! should have already had a place to land in mind...

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

+2.....

It will be the most unread forum on the forum.

Just like yesterdays thread where someone wanted to start a celestial exercise and the response was..... Close to zero.
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ice-94895.html

How about you just quietly crawl back under that rock mate.....

[Cheechako]

Yes, todays "sailor" (and I use the term loosely, including Cigarette boats etc) , just turn the key and turn on the "map thing". then roar off!

[HappySeagull]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

......
......

It's hard to imagine an internet forum where painting and photography were bundled under the heading "image-making"...

It's hard to imagine a forum on painting that doesn't include pastels,pencil-sketching,charcoals, watercolours, oil paints, acrylics.... let alone stone and woodcarving, linocuts, engraving...etc.
which I take to be your point?...
Otherwise, Markj's argument is correct-it just doesn't go back far enough...the compass, the chart....
The Art mediums live. But do the navigational"arts"? Why? the other half of this forum is about solar panels and winderators.Whaleoil, anyone?
Boatman gave the report. The lights are going out. We will have iphones stapled to the backs of our heads...
I'm not saying we shouldn't know how to light a fire but as to whether rubbing two sticks together is better than a magnifying glass or a high-tech match?
I'm suprised the photographers haven't leapt into the fray.
And,I'mthinking that thisfellow (GrowleyMonster'spost 34)
"....I used to see an old retired Royal Navy guy every year in Belize. His only navigation tools were his memory, his old log book, an almanac, a cheap digital watch, a cheaper SW receiver for checking his watch by the BBC hourly time tick, the relevant volumes of HO229......"
-was probably below (secretly)spinning his cheap SW radio around as an RDF -being an old RN guy, he would know about that!

[Andrew Troup]

My point has little to do with electronics vs paper, navigation vs pilotage, old vs new and nothing to do with better vs worse.

However I'm now a little clearer about what I'm trying to say, after reading how various people have interpreted my earlier post in various ways. So far nobody seems to understand my take on it*, so here's another try from me.

*(I don't mean nobody seems to agree; that's a different question from whether they understand ... but it seems to me it's not meaningfully possible to agree with what someone says - or disagree - without first understanding what they mean)

It strikes me that there are now two practicable approaches to position-finding for a cruising vessel.

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.

We tend to talk as if Option B was not available prior to the Omega system, and more recently Satnav and then GPS.
Previous electronic aids, like Loran or RDF still required us to do part of the job, so to me they fall under option A. They were "just another tool".

However the various Option B technologies started as expensive options, and in that context it was not out of the question to simply hire a professional human navigator rather than pay for a technology-based navigator. To me that still qualifies as Option B, even if the hired professional used traditional navigational equipment and methods.

Revisiting the analogy where I likened Option A to painting and Option B to photography, Captain Cook hired an artist to capture the topography of coastlines (for future pilotage). Some other captains did that for themselves.

So even before the invention of the camera, the job of capturing a permanent likeness could either be outsourced, or done autonomously by the sailor.

My point is this: a turnkey technology which offers sailors Option B is not just another tool to help find positions with. It's a tool which finds the position, and tells us the answer.

And I think because it's a conceptual shift, a disruptive step-change of major proportions, it's misleading to plot it on a smooth continuum with previous technological innovations like the chronometer.

And the fact that most people use a mixture of Options A and B does not seem to me to provide a satisfying reason to lump them under one heading.

A camera is not just another tool in a painter's arsenal. But a painter will almost certainly have a camera, and a photographer may well also paint.

Those people will probably go to different discussion forums to talk about painting or photography.

What I'm about to say is not a value judgement. It's an observation.

When we use an option B piece of technology, we are not navigating.

It is.

[Dockhead]

Did you guys run out of eggnog or something? Just drink the whiskey straight, then, and enjoy your holiday, already.

[daddle]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

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

So .... some cruisers have been building their own naval observatories so as to compile their own self-made nautical almanacs? Only a lazy dependent sailor would buy a pre-printed almanac. I heard of one free-loading sailor who listened to WWH to get the time of day. Sheesh, how lame is that!

Sorry in advance for the interruption .... carry on!