Boat Plans Uk | Navigation is not precise

Boat Plans Uk

ONE OF THE THINGS that small-boat navigation teaches you is that nothing is precise. The best navigators make allowances for the unknown factors that always affect small boats, especially sailboats. They plot their positions within a circle of uncertainty and if they’re seeking landfall at a particular spot on a coastline, they aim way off to one side or the other, so they know which way to turn when they sight land.

When I was a lot younger I thought I knew how to navigate with precision. This misconception was confirmed when I sailed a 17-foot dinghy across the English Channel from Dover to Calais. I studied the tide tables and figured out the speed and direction of the tidal stream (or the set and drift as I used to call it then) for every hour. I then drew my course on the chart and adjusted the compass heading to account for the distance the tide was pushing me sideways in each hour. And thus, with a great sense of triumph, I arrived off the rather featureless French coast exactly at Calais.

It was beginner’s luck, of course. Nobody can forecast the exact speed of the current, or its exact direction. Nobody can tell you how much leeway your boat will make. Nobody can forecast your exact speed or distance covered during any one-hour period, and so the detailed markings you make so carefully on the chart turn out to be nonsense. In my case, it was probably a matter of all the errors canceling each other out — a minor miracle in other words.

Years later, when further experience had taught me some humility, I read The Yacht Navigator’s Handbook, by Norman Dahl. In the introduction he says: “When I was first taught navigation (in the Royal Navy) errors were thought of as being rather disgraceful, the sole result of poor technique by the navigator. Whilst I always accepted (and still accept today) that I was not the most brilliant navigator in the world, I was disappointed to find that, however hard I tried, errors never seemed to go away. Navigating a submerged submarine, and later, yachts of many kinds in many situations, eventually made me realize that errors are an integral part of navigation and need to be studied in their own right.”

Dahl said a major purpose of his book was to show that errors in navigation are normal and natural, and that a major skill in navigation lies in your ability to interpret the results in terms of the likely errors. He goes on to show boat navigators how they can actually use the errors to help make sensible decisions about their positions and a future course of action.

As one who had never experienced any difficulty in making errors I found Dahl’s advice very comforting, and I never again tried to do anything as impossibly precise as maintaining a rhumb line from Dover to Calais.

I expect Dahl’s book is out of print now because it was first published in 1983, before the great revolution in navigating that finally did bring near- precision to position-finding. We don’t think of errors now, because GPS doesn’t allow for that. It will tell us our position to within a boatlength in any kind of visibility, day or night.

And yet people have run aground using GPS, often because GPS is more accurate than the charts you plot your position on. There have been many reports of yachts wrecked on rocks, reefs, and islands that were where the GPS said they weren’t.

So we now all find ourselves in the position that I was in all those years ago, when I knew precisely and without doubt how to cross the English Channel. It’s surely time we started doubting again. It’s time we listened to Mr. Dahl, time we started taking all the possible errors into account. Time to accept that navigation is never precise, even with GPS.
Happy New Year
I wish you all health and happiness for the coming year. May 2016 also bring you prosperity in all meanings of the word.

Today’s Thought

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

— Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship: The Hero as Prophet

Tailpiece

“What made you marry old Bella?”
“She was different from all the other girls I’ve met.”

“In what way?”
"She liked me."

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Boat Plans And Kits | An innocent adrift in the soup aisle

Boat Plans And Kits

 

THE ADMIRAL having been stricken with a long-term virus disease, it falls to me to forage for provisions. Unaccustomed as I am to grocery shopping, I bravely set sail for the victualling barge, an enormous structure named the Fred Meyer.

Inside, it’s all narrow gangways crammed with people seeking provisions, mainly women. Shelves from floor to ceiling hold all manner of gear from Tuscan melons to plumber’s wrenches.

I launch my little cart due west toward the Soup aisle and find myself passing through terra incognita, an area charted as Ladies’ Underwear. Speeding up, and averting my eyes from the flesh-colored frillies, I bear hard a-port at Cheese and  heave to in the Canned Soup aisle. I consult my sailing instructions from the Admiral:  “2 pkts Andersens pea soup. See lower shelves of soup aisle.” Oh, if only you knew the pathos of it. It’s all she can eat. It’s all she feels like, as she lies propped up in bed. Everything else tastes terrible.

It involves a long search. I reach the end of the aisle, go about, and tack back. Campbell’s everywhere. Thousands of cans of Campbell’s. No Andersens.

A pretty lady comes along. I try my trick of looking helpless, hoping she will take pity on me and lead me by the hand to the Andersens. No such luck. She speeds straight past, avoiding my gaze (deliberately, I believe, and regret to say). She grabs four small cans of Campbell’s, throws them in her cart, and sprints off.  

I drop my sailing instructions, bend down to pick them up, and lo, there on the very bottom shelf, where only a very underdeveloped dwarf would find it,  is a small and lonely collection of Andersens Split Pea Soup. I grab two cans — and feel a surge of relief and triumph.

I consult my instructions again. Fiber One.  Now, I’m not completely helpless. I know it’s a breakfast cereal. It must be with the packets of Cheerios and Cap’n Crunches. I cruise up and down the aisle. It’s crowded, and people get irritable when you drop anchor to inspect the labels and block the traffic.  

I’m on a collision course with a steely-eyed lady of advanced years at the helm of a large trolley. I’m plainly the stand-on shopping cart, being on the starboard tack, but she appears to have no knowledge of the responsibility of a give-way trolley — or, more likely, I fear, she doesn’t give a damn. Rule number two of the International Regulations  comes to mind and at the last moment I throw the helm over. I flash her my number one first-class glare, and draw my breath in with a loud hiss, but she sails past unrelenting.

Now I’m desperate for a pilot. I bear off downwind for the check-out counters where there’s a woman in an apron placing batteries on a shelf. She’s obviously a pilot and, just as obviously, she is engaged, but I see no pilot flag so I dive right in.

“Excuse me,” I say politely, “can you tell me where to find Fiber One?”

“Sure,” she says. She sprints off down the aisles, heaves to in the very same Breakfast Cereal aisle that I have just left, and reaches to the very top shelf where a lonely and (I must say) very inconspicuous packet of Fiber One resides.

“Very good for regularity,” she says a little too loudly.

“Thank you,” I say quietly, hoping she will go away now.

“It’s the fiber. My doctor says you don’t need prune juice if you eat Fiber One.”

Traffic in the cereal aisle is coming to a standstill. An interested crowd is gathering. They’re looking at me intently, trying to judge whether my insides are blocked up and whether I need a good dredging.

“Not for me,” I tell my pilot lamely. “Wife . . . Sick . . . No exercise . . .“

I thank her once again and the crowd parts to let me escape. I can tell they’re not buying it. They think it’s me that needs the Fiber One. They can tell. They’re smiling that sneaky smile that says I know you’re lying.

I shall make sure the Admiral is aware of the ignominy I am suffering in the course of revictualling and I shall light a candle for her quick recovery. I can only hope she is better before  she runs out of Fiber One.

Today’s Thought

I never make a trip the United States without visiting a supermarket. To me they are more fascinating than any fashion salon.

— Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, NY Journal-American, 8 Apr 64

Tailpiece

You’ve heard of King Arthur’s Round Table, of course. But do you know who was the roundest knight? It was Sir Cumference. And how did he acquire his size? From too much pi, naturally.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

 

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Boat Plans Wooden | These old boats deserve better

Boat Plans Wooden

I’M ALWAYS AMAZED when people selling boats won’t take the time and effort to clean them up a bit before inviting buyers to look at them. I’ve inspected two boats in the past few months, and quite frankly I was disgusted at the state they were in, despite the glowing descriptions in the advertisements.

Admittedly, I’m searching the cheap and nasty end of the boating spectrum. What I want is an inexpensive daysailer/weekender on which I can teach my grandkids to sail. They know the rudiments already, of course, and they’ve taken a few lessons, but I would like to teach them the real stuff that will keep them interested in sailing for the rest of their lives.

In particular, I’m looking for an old Santana 22, simply because I once restored one from a 28-year-old wreck. I discovered all her weak spots and now know where to look for trouble. Over a period of years, June and I sailed her from one and of the Salish Sea to the other, and we were delighted with her performance as a “sport cruiser,” as I called her.

But the two Santana 22s I found for sale on Craigslist last year were simply not worth looking at. One, described as “awesome” and well maintained had a keel that was a mass of rust. There were bits and pieces of mysterious boat stuff strewn all over the main cabin and the forepeak, rust streaks on the paint, ripped and deflated upholstery, aluminum chainplates bubbling with a white encrustation, and a mast support beam that was bowed downward. The other boat was much the same, but it had also suffered the “improvements” of a series of owners with their own lubberly ideas of what a small sloop should look and behave like.

I don’t know how many prospective buyers must have been put off by the state of these boats, but I would have been ashamed to put them on the market in that condition. I know we’re talking about boats that are nearly 50 years old, but I can’t understand why they can’t at least have been kept clean and tidy and smelling sweet. Nobody expects an old boat to be perfect, but to present a boat for sale in such a slatternly run-down condition is an affront to the person expecting the “awesome” boat of the advertisement. It actually hurts me to see good, well-designed boats so badly neglected. There are years of life left in them yet. They surely deserve better.

Today’s Thought

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old wine.

— Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

Tailpiece

“How did you knock this pedestrian down, sir?”

“I didn’t knock him down, officer. I stopped to let him cross the road and he fainted.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

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