Old Salts Tales
I was talking to an old boy who many years ago sailed on Thames Sailing barges. He was telling me a couple of tricks they used to help them navigate in the days before modern aids.
When tacking up a creek in fog they had a bucket of pebbles and a catapult. By catapulting a pebble and listening for the splash they could tell when the splashes stopped it was time to tack.
Another trick in fog was if a seabird was on a buoy and you knew the next buoy was nearby then as you passed the buoy by making a lot of noise the bird would fly off to the next one. So you just followed it. I asked him why didn't they use the compass and he said the glass was so fogged up it was barely readable.
I don't know if he was pulling my leg or if anyone else has heard of old tricks for navigating before we got our modern aids. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]
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