Sharing of Routes, Tracks and Waypoints

[mikedefieslife]

I can't see any value in sharing a route.

Most passages are nothing more than choosing where you want to go and timing it with the weather. other than marking weather bouys when doing a Transat, my navigation planning was go south-south west a bit then more west. Due the winds and weather trying to follow someone's route would be silly in such an instance. Same for most passages in the Med.

Now sharing a track can be useful when navigating tricky waters. The entrance into Avoir Portugal maybe (if tide times were noted), or passing through a narrow reef.

This should never need to be said, but just like in any other walk of life, you'd still be wary and keep a keen eye.

[sailorphil9]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

I can't see any value in sharing a route.

Most passages are nothing more than choosing where you want to go and timing it with the weather. other than marking weather bouys when doing a Transat, my navigation planning was go south-south west a bit then more west. Due the winds and weather trying to follow someone's route would be silly in such an instance. Same for most passages in the Med.

Now sharing a track can be useful when navigating tricky waters. The entrance into Avoir Portugal maybe (if tide times were noted), or passing through a narrow reef.

This should never need to be said, but just like in any other walk of life, you'd still be wary and keep a keen eye.

We were in the Gambier Islands, S Pacific, last year. We draw 2.8 m (9'). One particular couple had made all their tracks through the reefs (opencpn+cmap93) available to other cruisers. We found their tracks very useful to follow into some anchorages that I would not normally have looked at, though we proceeded with a great degree of caution. Tides were generally weak and we could clearly see the bottom in <4 m water. It worked for us. So, sharing tracks is useful, but be sure that the technical setups are similar. On the other hand, if you are only using your own setup, then do be careful of the charts - we found dangerous differences between CMap93 and Navionics in S Cuba a couple of years ago - and I'm sure that there are many more instances out there.


ps - our hull is steel.

[barnakiel]

There are basically two modalities in navigation.


One is to go between waypoints (even if mental) with complete disregard for courses.


The other is going following a course line (e.g. a transit).


The latter is a good example of the case for routes - in many places there are no landside nav aids and so our transit is a celestial (satellite) one along a specific course (taking us from wpt A to wpt B, exactly on the line joining these two).


In summary, routes can be at times most useful and the only way to navigate safe or at least safer.


b.

[MicHughV]

I wonder how people managed to sail around the world without GPS ??? Only a few thousand as a rough guess....just lucky probably....???

[OloteleMtn]

They were lucky not to fall off the edge.....

[MicHughV]

yes, that was the big trick....knowing where the edge was, so you wouldn't fall of...it's there, somewhere, I forget exactly now, but I was always careful to stay away from the "edge".....glad I made it past the edge...without GPS even....just plain lucky I guess...

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

I wonder how people managed to sail around the world without GPS ??? Only a few thousand as a rough guess....just lucky probably....???

Basically, just like in everyday life, two methods were deployed by early sailors:


- navigation (going somewhere),
- drifting (going wherever the dominant wind and current takes you).


I do not get this 'few thousand' part though. Do you mean few thousand people?


If so, then they were carried like a cargo. Only a handful of people on the bridge knew what was going on, those in the holds (emigrants, slaves, soldiers) were ignorant and busy vomiting.


Navigation is ages old. First the seasons, then the stars, and now the satellites.


In fact, sailing around the world was the easiest part as it was enough to show great persistence and always go in the same direction. The world is a globe, you know.



A funny fact: the one who got most attribution (Magellanes) never ever made it! It took a Basque navigator el Cano to hone 18 of the original 270 to see the whole loop:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_S...%C3%A1n_Elcano


El Cano landed in San Lucar de Barrameda, where today you can see very famous beach horse races. You can also listen to some good flamenco hondo / palo seco / pop there and sip delicious cold Jerez.


In smaller craft, it was only about 1900 that first known cases of circumnavigation got publicized. At that time, both accurate chronometers and exquisite sextants were a norm.


So there was technically nil challenge for a navigator. Back then early on the limiting factors were mostly quality of our boats (heavy, slow, difficult) and lack of cruising infrastructure (today 99% of circumnavigators make multiple pit stops in perfectly civilized locations.



Today level of difficulty - next to zero.
1900 level of difficulty - difficult.



b.

[MicHughV]

I'm not sure how many people sail around the world these days. I have a book, somewhere in my collection of books by Jimmy Cornell, author of " World Cruising Routes" where Jimmy has tabulated the number of boats going thru' Panana thru' the years and stopping at various islands. Without dragging the book out, I seem to recall the number was certainly in the high 100's per year, though this number varies from year to year. Surprisingly, there are also people that transit the canal from west to east. There also those brave souls that go around Cape Horn, not many, to be sure, but some do.
I think it's probably fair to say, that over the years, the number of boats that have circumnavigated is likely in the 1,000's.

[MicHughV]

I should also add, that there are a number of boats, leaving from the west coast of America to embark on a circumnavigation, but the number of these, I do not know.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

I'm not sure how many people sail around the world these days. I have a book, somewhere in my collection of books by Jimmy Cornell, author of " World Cruising Routes" where Jimmy has tabulated the number of boats going thru' Panana thru' the years and stopping at various islands. Without dragging the book out, I seem to recall the number was certainly in the high 100's per year, though this number varies from year to year. Surprisingly, there are also people that transit the canal from west to east. There also those brave souls that go around Cape Horn, not many, to be sure, but some do.
I think it's probably fair to say, that over the years, the number of boats that have circumnavigated is likely in the 1,000's.

However, your original statement went:



" ... I wonder how people managed to sail around the world without GPS ??? Only a few thousand as a rough guess ..."



So, let us glibly skip over Loran or Decca - these are not GPS.


And let's assume (based on Quora) that a few thousand stands for about 4 (3-5) thousand.



GPS became real around 1980 and available to sailors at sea around 1990. In 2000 it was the size of iPhone15 and virtually everyone had one.


Now Jimmy and his canal statistics. And a question, how accurately can we guess (be it a rough guess, as you wanted) the number of boats that sailed rtw from the number of boats that transit Panama?


NOT very accurately.


The canal is used by boats going both ways, and a boat going from NY to LA would be counted towards our data.


But to guess the number you are interested in, we would need to know how many of these sailed onwards round the cape of Good Hope or the Suez Canal, as a minimum.


Etc.


Not an easy task to get to the number you are after, if viable at all. But as you said, a very wild guess could be attempted and we would arrive at a sound, if broad, estimate.


Unfortunately, (I mean fortunately) "before gps" was also before smartphone, facebook, blogging, vlogging and other such devices that leave a trace that can be used in our calculations.


My own wild guess (still, based in having passed Panama and rounded Good Hope) is that about maybe 10 to 20% of sail boats passing Panama E-W become successful circumnavigators. Note however, this is post-gps guess, and pre-gps were % were almost certainly lower.


From 2000 backwards to 1900 we could assume some kind of logarithmic order



Then to those wobbly figures we would have to add all the racers (Globe, VOR, Vendee, etc.) that we are sure have rtw'ed. And all the famous adventurers - Slocum, Dumas, Teliga, Moitessier, Gebrault, etc.


So, what did you get? 4000? Or something else?



If you have a statistician friend, he could help. I would love to hear his guess then.


;-)


Take care. Dream of Loran, Decca, coral reefs of the Tuamotus, monster waves of the Aghullas and pirates of the Somali coast. Broken dreams, NZ being the best place to start a family, cancer, madness. Before gps, possibly fewer sailors have circumnavigated than one may be tempted to assume.



All of those who did were carried onboard sail boats navigated by proper navigators.



barnakiel

[MicHughV]

well.....we could say... " a lot".....or "many"....or " quite a few"...

in the Kalahari...the bushmen count like this...

they say, "one, two, three, many"......they don't have a written language, only a spoken language, they don't have words for thousands, millions, billions, etc...it's just "many"...anything more than three is more than they can carry, further that they can see, etc....it just becomes "many"

if you were to ask the chief " how many children do you have" the answer would be "many"

how far to that mountain "many days"...

how many people live in your tribe..."many"...

how many stars in the sky...."many"..

so, that's my response to how many circumnavigators there have been..."Many"

[MicHughV]

do you remember " satnav" the pre-runner to GPS....now I'm dating myself....

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

do you remember " satnav" the pre-runner to GPS....now I'm dating myself....

We started sailing offshore only in 2003. So my recollection of sat-nav comes only very vaguely from apprenticeship periods I had onboard a deep see trawler base somewhere in 80-90'ies. A sacred kind of device approached only by the captain and the bridge officers.


Gps and other tech and social developments are responsible for what we are faced with today - marinas everywhere, full of plastick toys, people in but the remotest parts of the oceans, damaged reefs, noise, pollution and the end of romance overall. Thousands circumnavigating. Queues up the slopes of Sagarmatha.



https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...scents.svg.png



Time flies, technologies improve, societies change. It would be unreasonable for the oceans to remain empty and pristine.


The good news is this cycle is nearing its end. Give it 20, max 100 years and the planet will be blue and green again!



b.

[MicHughV]

I beat you by a few years...

I started building my boat in the late 70's.

Launched in 1981.

I was broke as a church mouse, back then, didn't have a pot to piss in, but I managed.

The good Lord looks after drunks, fools and sailors, so I was well covered there. I was in my 20's back then, invincible and was going to live forever.

[fxykty]

My dad was our navigator. When he and my mom decided to sail the ocean, he taught himself celestial navigation, got a plastic sextant, and resurrected an old Timex mechanical chronometer.

My parents and I sailed from Victoria to Hawaii and return in 1977 on a Great Dane 28. I had my 10th birthday midway there. As a kid I simply accepted that my dad could get us there and back. I’ll never forget my first sighting of palm trees as we approached Hilo for our first landfall.

A couple years later in 1980 we left Victoria, now with a Van de Staft 32, and sailed around the South Pacific to New Zealand and back to Canada over almost 4 years. I realised that he while he wasn’t a great sailor he was a very good navigator, especially given the limited tools and information that he had. I remember how slowly our positions would advance as we sailed at 3-4 knots - a 100 mile day was outstanding.

He did noon sun sites only, spending up to an hour braced against the mast so he could get an accurate local noon, then another hour or two working out our position. Sometimes he put us in the wrong hemisphere or in the middle of a continent, but mostly in the Pacific and roughly in line with previous positions. He synced the watch every few days from a shortwave time signal. He found every island we were looking for and avoided all the ones we needed to.

Our dead reckoning was very basic as we had a Walker towed log only - there were virtually no electrics on either of our boats. Sunless approaches were nerve wracking and we often spent a night hove to waiting for daylight to enter a new pass or harbour, or waiting for another boat to follow.

Kerosene was used for cooking and for lanterns/lights, a bucket for the head, and salt water for everything except drinking. Our inboard diesel mostly wouldn’t start so we got good at sailing in and out everywhere, and sometimes towing our boat from the dinghy with its 1.5hp Seagull outboard.

At the time we weren’t particularly primitive nor small, but there were a few boats out there with refrigeration and ice cubes (now, those were legendary) and even some with sat nav receivers.

A favourite story of my dad’s was of a fellow cruiser that we got to know in Tonga who wrecked in the Lau Group while heading for Suva - apparently their DR put them close to a reef so they went below and were waiting for the sat nav to acquire a position when they ran onto the reef. We passed by a few days after and saw their boat on the reef and later caught up with them in Suva and got the story.

Those were the days; it was a completely different era from what we have now.