Zen -
navigation is a bit different on
boats and there's a difference between speeding on a
boat at 8 knots and cruising between thermals on a glider at 70knots. I still own my LS6 and I moved to Arizona mainly so that I could fly all year
The
concept of polars is the same when sailing, but when on the ocean they aren't quite as important.
Unfortunately, transitioning to sailing from flying forced me to learn new skills:
- Plumbing
- Water rationing (not just dumping ballast on the final home stretch)
- Provisioning
- Weather avoidance (at <8knots you aren't going to outrun weather)
- Waves & cooking
- Navigation (much easier when you can unfold maps completely)
- Anchoring
Luckily in a
boat you can heave-to or
anchor and get some sleep, and usually you have an
autopilot to relieve you.
Radar and
AIS are great additions to visual scanning for
collision avoidance (and those scans only need to be done every 10-15 minutes or so at sea)