Considering ditching electronics and navigating the "old" way

[requiem]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Good to know water depth is not an issue where you sail fly!

Well, I'm not a pilot, but I've always just assumed that if airplane pilots have to worry about water depth something has gone terribly wrong.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by requiem

Well, I'm not a pilot, but I've always just assumed that if airplane pilots have to worry about water depth something has gone terribly wrong.

Well, I kinda remember an incident in SF many years ago when a JAL DC8 somehow missed the runway and landed in the bay instead. In that case, the very shallow water over a soft mud bottom meant the plane didn't sink, and IIRC there were few casualties. Had it been in deeper water the outcome would have been different!

Depth was important, and yes, something had gone terribly wrong!

Jim

found some stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_2

[SteveSadler]

Most of my passages pre 1984 were done without satnav or gps, it was romantic, time consuming and even with the supervision of a very experienced delivery captain, dangerous. Go 3 days without a sight due to cloud cover, your DR is all you have and approaching land at night without a known position is not safe. So to be prudent, you hove to all night, in hopes you can see land. Except there's fog. Now you keep sailng towards land, but where? No fix for 3 days? GPS is your best friend. Did someone mention the cost of paper charts?

[GrowleyMonster]

Celestial, done with almanac and tables, does not rely on any 20th or 21st century technology. It is also fun, or at least interesting. It is an important part of the Navigator's toolkit. An understanding of the celestial triangle is essential for computing the most basic elements of ocean navigation such as great circle waypoints and distances. You don't get that from a touchscreen. Celestial makes you a real navigator and it is a good backup to electronics.


That doesn't mean that you shouldn't also be able to navigate electronically. A used android phone or tablet with OCPN and the FREE charts for US waters and CM93 for ocean crossings are a cheap alternative to turnkey chart plotters and expensive portfolios of electronic charts. Or run OCPN on a Linux laptop and a BU-353 or similar USB GPS puck. Still pretty cheap, right? Mighty cheap insurance against the chance of being socked in and unable to take any observations for several days.



Paper charts do not necessarily have to be up to date, and you can update them yourself anyway. But more important is the ability to construct your own charts. Or bare plot sheets. Saves marking and erasing and marking and erasing your charts. Often you only need a few key points marked on a chart and so picking the L/L off an electronic chart or Coast Pilot or Sailing Directions or whatever sailing guide, might be all the data you need.

[Martin S]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Barnakiel is exactly right! I love traditional navigation, but it's too expensive! And not enough space to store all the charts.

That being said, I guess I have 200kg of paper charts on board, stuffed under every bunk But even that doesn't nearly cover my cruising area. And let's not even get started on keeping them all updated. Electronic nav is far cheaper, and more convenient.

Dockhead, you are usually “on the nail” with comments so I would love to better understand your comment on cheaper. I am a fan of iNavX on an iPad and with all charts available for say the Med at a fair price, I would agree this is hard to beat. But then don’t I need paper charts as well as backup. My chart plotter also needs updating and the Navionics charts are seem to be more than double the price of iNavX. Should I ditch the chart plotter and get everything on the iPad. (Wonder if I can get radar overlay on iPad?). Why not go to paper charts and just reserve electronics for AIS and radar? Thoughts?

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by Martin S

Dockhead, you are usually “on the nail” with comments so I would love to better understand your comment on cheaper. I am a fan of iNavX on an iPad and with all charts available for say the Med at a fair price, I would agree this is hard to beat. But then don’t I need paper charts as well as backup. My chart plotter also needs updating and the Navionics charts are seem to be more than double the price of iNavX. Should I ditch the chart plotter and get everything on the iPad. (Wonder if I can get radar overlay on iPad?). Why not go to paper charts and just reserve electronics for AIS and radar? Thoughts?

How much you need paper charts for backup depends on where you are and what electronics you've got. And even then, for just backup purposes, you can get away with a lot less paper charts than you'd want if they were your primary nav charts.

Personally, I like having 2 different types of electronic charts on board and on at least 2 completely independent devices. For me (in the US), that's currently Navionics charts on the plotter and OpenCPN with both the free raster and ENC charts on a laptop with a USB GPS puck.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Speaking as one who made ocean passages with celestial because it was all that there was, I can say that I'm glad that I know how to do it, but I'm even gladder that I don't have to any more.

Jim

Got my vote Jim

[robert sailor]

We should all go and buy a Model T and learn how to really drive around town. Double clutching between gears and mechanical brakes...give me a break.
There was a time all I had was celestial navigation and at the time I don’t recall having fun doing it, it just was part of offshore sailing.
There is nothing wrong with living in the past for the fun of it but it’s pretty hard to make a good case of it being equal in anyway because it isn’t.
If you want to visit atolls you certainly won’t be doing it using celestial navigation.
With our new systems we really don’t navigate anymore, it’s just a video game that works. If you want to challenge yourself go all the way and throw your tables away and do all your site reductions by hand. It’s only takes a page and a half of trig calculations...you need to be on the bright side to accomplish this.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by Sailingsailor12

2) The US Navy dropped the Celestial Navigation requirement for their Officers when GPS came out. They require it now. The bad guys can jam the GPS signals.

Some day I want to sail from the west coast of the US to Hawaii. If 2 or 3 happen, it could get kind of interesting trying to find Hawaii before food, water, and fuel run out. Going from Hawaii to the US West coast, no problem, I will hit something, just about on schedule, the only question is am I north or south of where I want to be. At that point I will be able to resupply and continue on.

The real story on your number 2 is that a new Naval Academy superintendent decided that they needed to go back to the days when ships were made of wood and men were made of steel and dammit my midshipmen are all learning celestial nav. Then his CAPTs and CDRs had to backfill a reason and came up with GPS jamming. It's not something needed for the SWO pin or an OOD qual as far as I know and there's no requirement to demonstrate regular proficiency with it, all of which would be required if it was legitimately a required skill like all the other required SWO skills. Heck 3/4 of the midshipmen aren't ever going to be responsible for navigating a ship anyway so deciding to teach celestial at the Naval Academy because of a legitimate concern that it will be required doesn't make a lot of sense. Believe me, I went to the Coast Guard Academy but I'm sure it isn't much different at any of them - almost nothing they do at the academies are justifiable, has any applicability to real life in the fleet, or make a lick of sense so it would be a funny joke to tell any of us who graduated from one that we should start doing something because they started teaching it there!

If you're going to Hawaii and the GPS and GLONASS constellations both fail then either we're in a world war and the home of PACOM and a good chunk of the US Pacific forces is the last place you want to be. Or else the Coast Guard will send C-130s up and check if anyone's lost on VHF and give you vectors and drop you supplies if you need them or you can flag a passing freighter or follow contrails or even just turn around. I rescued plenty of folks who got in trouble at sea for far more prosaic reasons than some crazy improbable event like this and wasn't able to rescue quite a few as well. When you can honestly say you've done everything possible to prevent the top 20 causes of actual mishaps that actually kill people at sea every year, then it might make sense to plan for the vanishingly small probability events. Or just learn celestial because it's a fun for you and you enjoy it and no other reason necessary!