Quote:
Originally Posted by estarzinger
Dude, practically speaking when offshore watch keeping in order to 'advance his position with DR' you just simply look down the route for (say) 10nm. You don't need to do anything sophisticated or a calculation. And if you are on a plotter (raster or vector) you flick the zoom a bit. None of this takes any time to do. It may look like 'gazing at a plotter' but there is (should be) actually a thought process going on rather than a blank stare and blank mind.
It is in fact one of the advantages of a plotter. You (always) know where you are on the displayed chart and your route/course line. You don't have to plot a position, removing the potential for at least one possible error.
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Agreeing with Evans and Stu --
What's the point of doing DR by hand, if you have valid
GPS data? And why is this "real navigation", and correctly using
GPS data is not?
I still do a lot of traditional
navigation, and am considered by many to be a dinosaur, but this seems to me to be really over the top.
DR is a great exercise (and I think all sailors should know how to do it), and it is a valid way to cross-check or back up other position data, if you need to do that, but GPS/Glonass position data is extremely reliable, and I can't imagine how it would be worth diverting time and attention away from other navigational tasks, just to back up or cross check your GPS.
Keep in mind Evans' "triage of focus and attention" -- a really astute phrase in my opinion. This resource -- especially on a short-handed yacht crossing an ocean -- must be used efficiently. If you have a chart plotter, a routine like what Evans described is the most efficient way to check where you are and what is around you and prevent what happened to the poor guy this thread is about. Cross check with eyeballs,
radar, and
depth sounder. Cross check the electronic chart with, ideally, a paper one, or at least, a different electronic one. When using electronic
charts, keep in mind the zoom problem (although that doesn't seem to be what the problem was in this particular case).
But DR, in my humble opinion, is a big waste of time and effort, if you have a working plotter. Much better, in my humble opinion, to spend that time scanning the horizon, or digging into the
charts.