What a great thread!
If nothying else it has raised the awareness of the need to "be able to navigate" and let's hope its made a few people think. Just a thought but there are a couple of places I have been (not round the UK) where the use of electronic nav aids is "not advised" because the charts are all wrong and if, for example, on a moonless night you set of west thinking the land is behind you - its not its in front of you - and if you survive till morning you can count the wrecks on the reef!
My hope for tghe future is that the electronics gets better and eventually delivers the service the manufacturers currently claim, in the mean time we navigate with lots of things and as many have noted anxiety increases when the electronics goes phutt. But when it does that standard of lookout goes up!
Just one question to the GPS masses that dont carry paper charts, if your electronic plotter capability does fail (including all the redundancy) on a moonless night far off shore how will you know what nav mark you have found - assuming you find one and even if you have a compass how will you know which course to steer?
My answer to that question is the rational that maintains the chart collection on our boat - just curious thats all.
|
Previous
Index
Next
Flat
Re: backup plotters
Edit
Reply
Quote
