How changing habits of navigation affect us

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by wingssail

I CAN do all of that on my electronic chart already on my 24" HD monitor, but I don't want it in the cockpit. The cockpit is for sailing. Navigation occurs at the nav station.

Modern nav occurs whether the owner /skipper decides to do it. That could be on their iPhone ,sitting in the cockpit.

Many boats only have vestigial chart tables , these days , and often of if using a big paper chart that’s on the saloon table

The solution to these issues is not telling people to do something they don’t normally do

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by requiem

On the topic of trusting charts too much, this seems relevant: https://rifeconsultancy.com/news/bul...agtion-charts/



Seems an offshore oil platform was mistakenly left off the chart. There's another case I recall, where the Admiralty chart and the Greek chart disagreed on the location of a rather large rock. Chart errors happen, and if you're lucky it's the sort of error that can by other means.



The 2017 jamming event in the Black Sea is probably well known by now, but there was another jamming event two years before at an unspecified port.



Intermittent loss of signal is always a possibility, and being able to handle it should be one of those things, like diagnosing an engine problem, that sailors should have in their bag of skills. I still consider it a problem that most plotters don't allow the sort of annotations, lines of position, etc. that hlprmnky mentioned just now.







Eh, if the US considers it necessary to make one go away, I'm guessing the others wouldn't be up for much longer either.

Yes but if the oceans are turned to glass the last issue of concern is where I am in my small leisure boat

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

I beg to differ.



My biggest scare occurred back in the day when I was using a gps and paper charts at the nav station. I put the boat on autopilot and went below the input waypoints from the chart into the gps to make a route. I made an error with one of the waypoints and spent some time correcting it. As I climbed the companionway steps the hair on the back if my neck stood up and I made a wild dive for the wheel and just managed a crash gybe before I sailed into a cliff. It took two weeks for that damned hair to go back down properly.



Now I sit at the helm, touch the touch pad on my MFD a couple of times for a goto waypoint and press the nav button in the autopilot. The only downside is that I don't get near as much exercise as I used to.



My nav table on the boat I have now has not had a chart on it since I've owned the boat and now serves it's proper function of being somewhere to rest my drink or porridge whilst I use the remote to change the TV channel.

This is far more like most people navigate these days.

I’m a fan of all sorts of navigation ( and yes I carry paper charts , largely cause I like them , I have a room at home with 20 historical charts framed on the wall.

But I do my nav electronically , I inspect my route on the mfd or the below decks nab computer , zooming in to see max detail , I then drop a waypoint ahead , using the AP compass following , I work up CTS numbers, rarely I navigate using the AP directly to the waypoint. I like to keep a large scale paper charts for long voyages where I mark up the route. These days I don’t even bother with that as I just maintain a running paper record of hourly gps locations , in fact I’d just adding a little thermal printer that prints out a mini log record automatically every hour.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by wingssail

I'm thinking that was bad navigation practice on your part.

• It is sloppy navigation to enter waypoints and create routes at the helm, errors are easy to introduce in those situations.
• Do your route planning before you set out on your passage
• If you need to make a change to your planned route, do it long before you are yards away from a cliff
• Spend very little time below when you are single handing, and if you have crew, split the duties so that one person can stay on watch. If you are single, stay away from cliffs when you need to be below (tack, heave to, or just turn away)
• Keep a display on deck so you can understand where the nearby dangers are.
• Mostly motor boat people sit in their captain's chairs at the helm instead of sailing and looking where they are going.

Professionally sailed yachts and virtually all racing yachts do their navigation below at a quiet, dry, properly equipped, navigation station.

Single handers have many compromises to deal with to have safe passages.

Again this is why current navigation training techniques are out of touch and result in situations where people preach solutions that best no relevance to actual practice

Most modern yachts have no place to test a paper chart except the saloon table.

The Queen Mary 2 does her voyage planning electronically on a dedicated planing ECDIS station.

Racing crews nor professional delivery habitually use paper on chart tables. Most now use tablets.

Most people have one MFD at the helm these days. Fewer and fewer people have belowdecks chart displays. ( mostly cause fewer and fewer yachts have comfortable belowdecks nav areas. )

Hence in my experience nearly everyone now plots routed electronically typically by dropping waypoints ahead either before the journey or during it. ( for mobos usually before for sailing usually during , cause you have lots of time at 6 knots )

This is the reality of modern navigation. One mfd and the helm.

Increasing we are seeing tablets being used in preference to MFDs again navigation is done on this.

There is very little risk in pointing at a touch screen and generating a waypoint which is then created automatically and transferred to the autopilot

Far more errors occurred in paper chart days as people transfered waypoints into courses to steer and got that wrong.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Shanachie

Yet at some point, it's hardly sailing when devices are making all of the decisions and doing all of the work for you.


I've collected sailing books for more than 20 years.


The old books by Bernard Moitessier, Alec Rose, Joshua Slocum and countless others are enchanting tales of sailors overcoming difficult conditions, loneliness, mysterious weather, unknown obstacles and more.


They sailed their boats with their brains and brawn and senses.



The books written these days? More than a few sailors come off as IT people -- writing email to their weather guide, manipulating suites of electronic devices, adjusting sails with electric winches, etc.


Personally, I like the old way of sailing better, although I am thankful that I have a depth sounder and can read my digitized paper charts on a waterproof tablet.


At 68, I still pull up my anchor and chain by hand, even though I could afford a fancy windlass. It gets the blood flowing in the morning.

A “ romantic “ view of sailing is all fine and dandy , like you I’ve read all these books

But it’s not relevant to modern boats and modern sailors. They come from the smartphone generation

We have to accept that and train people to appreciate the risks. It’s useless advocating going back to candles.

Modern homes are full of “ mod cons” and labour saving devices and computer , so is your workplace , your car. Your modern boat is no different. ( powered winches , led lighting , integrated navigation. ) Tech is everywhere.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Bill_Giles

People will argue on this deep into the night. Stick a big chart on your chart table, mark your position on it every hour with the time and log reading. If it all breaks down you can resume traditional navigation immediately.

Sure , people that have never done Celestial , or a running fix in 20 years , or worked up a CTS bearing in 10 years are going to “ resume traditional navigation” “ immediately “

Sure they are ! Once they remember how to use a pencil. No doubt their answers will be perfect too.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by wingssail

I CAN do all of that on my electronic chart already on my 24" HD monitor, but I don't want it in the cockpit. The cockpit is for sailing. Navigation occurs at the nav station.

Lots of boats , especially mobos , and many many sailing boats have the nav station at the helm. So that’s fine then.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

I was miles away from the cliff when I went below to enter the waypoints. The problem is that transferring them from position on chart to lat/long scales then to gps via a keyboard provides a lot of opportunities for transcription errors.

I'm a single hander who has done about 40,000 nm of coastal cruising during the past 20 years and my experience acquired judgement is that life's a lot simpler and safer doing all the navigation on a MFD at the helm position.

What I would really like to be able to do is run OpenCPN with Navionics charts on my two 9" Raymarine Axioms at the helm. One can only dream.

Your experience is entirely consistent with a lot of modern boaters. I would agree with you that for people not traditionally taught paper chart techniques , modern electronic based navigation is much safer and less error prone

I taught Yachtmaster shore-based theory courses for years. People made shocking simple errors on paper charts usually involving writing things down wrong or working up incorrect course to steer vectors. That’s even before we get into manually calculating secondary port tides.

Even with celestial these days most people use an app for calculations whereas I use a paper worksheet. I’m still amazed underway how my manual mental addition goes to hell at sea.

Far better to use the tide app on one’s phone !!!

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Bill_Giles

People will argue on this deep into the night. Stick a big chart on your chart table, mark your position on it every hour with the time and log reading. If it all breaks down you can resume traditional navigation immediately.

Or I could press the little button which shows the boat with a windy line behind it and let the gadget mark a position a number of times each second.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Bowdrie

Porridge?

Yep, I use a mix of 1 part oat bran and 2 parts rolled oats then jazz it up with a table spoon of mixed dried fruit. If I really want to spoil myself I drizzle some maple syrup on top.

I remember a recipe in a Tristram Jones book. A layer of oat porridge then a layer of smoked kippers until the barrel was full lashed to the mast on deck. do the crew could grab a handful. Tough blokes who could keep that down in a North sea storm.

[Brioche]

The original post referred to the change in how people think that may be brought on by reliance on machine charting displacing human situational awareness and navigation, which is an interesting proposal. The difference is also greater depending on whether one is navigating out of sight of land or, technically, "piloting" within sight of land. It is hard to have much sense of place when you have no land to look at, although you become more aware of the points of the compass and how they relate to wind and weather. If you lose GPS, it i good to have backup through dead reckoning and celestial references -- but you have time to perform those tasks. On the other hand, when you are within sight of land, using either a paper chart or a zoomed-out view on a chart plotter is essential in giving you a real sense of where you are. When I can see land, I don't want to just see that I am on some theoretical course shown on a chart plotter -- I want to know where I actually am.
Although electronic charting is highly sophisticated these days, it remains fallible. Much of my sailing is on the Hudson River, which winds around and has narrow channels and wide shoals in many places. Every few years a towed or pushed barge runs aground, despite what must be pretty good systems on the tugs.
A few years back, we were out on a dark night and saw a tug-barge combination coming slowly upriver, scanning the banks at times with a searchlight, and obviously piloted by someone without much memory of the river. We had passed a jetty just up from a wide shallow bay, after which the river took a sharp turn. We saw the tug begin to turn into the shallows, evidently thinking that was where the river turned. Fortunately, we had a powerful light on board, and were able to shine it into the shallows and beyond to the reeds toward the shore. The tug immediately turned back on course and followed us up toward the channel.
Bottom line is all systems fail at times.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

...Most modern yachts have no place to test a paper chart except the saloon table.

I agree, I don't ever spread out a paper chart and start plotting either. I do my navigating on a big screen, with keyboard and mouse, in a quiet dry place.

The Queen Mary 2 does her voyage planning electronically on a dedicated planing ECDIS station. Oh, They don't do it on a 8" MFD out in the weather somewhere, I wonder why?

Racing crews nor professional delivery habitually use paper on chart tables. Most now use tablets.

The ones I've seen have a nav station and many have laptops there, and radios. Now days a tablet is taken on deck and carried around, one that mirrors the below deck navigation equipment of reference.

Most people have one MFD at the helm these days. Fewer and fewer people have belowdecks chart displays. ( mostly cause fewer and fewer yachts have comfortable belowdecks nav areas. )...

Goboatingnow, Where one navigates can be a matter of preference (or maybe navigation has gotten so easy that people get casual about it) but in my view, placing waypoints with a fingers poked between spokes of the helm, and add the difficulty of entering lon/lat, on a 8" or 10" screen, in dark and stormy conditions, just seems dodgy to me. If boat without navigation stations below deck are the trend these days it is just a sign that buyers don't place any importance on the navigation task. Maybe it's the smart phone generation.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by wingssail

I CAN do all of that on my electronic chart already on my 24" HD monitor, but I don't want it in the cockpit. The cockpit is for sailing. Navigation occurs at the nav station.

I prefer both in the same place. Admittedly some boats are poorly laid out to accomplish that but if I have a navigational question, a quick look down at the chart plotter is much better than having to leave the helm and go down below giving up keeping a proper watch.

In the theoretical good old days of paper charts and hand calculations, it was much more common for it to be impractical to handle navigation at the helm station. With modern tools, it's much more viable.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Brioche

Every few years a towed or pushed barge runs aground, despite what must be pretty good systems on the tugs.

And how many ran aground back when they only had a compass and paper charts?

If the old ways were that much better, you can bet the shipping companies would go aboard and strip out all the electronics. Not only would it eliminate the expensive groundings, there would be big savings not having to buy those fancy electronic systems.

Of course, back in those days, not everyone had a camera directly linked to a worldwide communications network, such that every grounding was distributed to millions within 30 seconds of it happening.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Goboatingnow, Where one navigates can be a matter of preference (or maybe navigation has gotten so easy that people get casual about it) but in my view, placing waypoints with a fingers poked between spokes of the helm, and add the difficulty of entering lon/lat, on a 8" or 10" screen, in dark and stormy conditions, just seems dodgy to me. If boat without navigation stations below deck are the trend these days it is just a sign that buyers don't place any importance on the navigation task. Maybe it's the smart phone generation.

If you are typing in numeric coordinates, I could buy that. While most systems still have that capability (if you can find the right mene), most use graphical interfaces, so when poking a spot on the map, you never have the opportunity to type the wrong number.

Even if you do somehow poke the wrong spot, most modern chart plotters include checks, so if a new route would run you aground, it issues a warning. Plus with the chart at the helm, you can check every few seconds/minutes where you are and if you are going to run aground, it's pretty obvious.

So yes, it's both more casual and better than the old ways. Transposing numbers during hand calculations seems a lot more likely.