NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
GPS
From: Herbert Prinz
Date: 2004 Oct 13, 18:01 -0400
From: Herbert Prinz
Date: 2004 Oct 13, 18:01 -0400
I gave my message deliberately this new subject, because I am tired of discussing GPS under a pretence such as "backup for celestial?". We don't need to pay lip service to some vaguely defined understanding that we can't mention the three letter word. As I understand it, this is a list for the history of navigation. When we discuss topics such as unreliability of GPS due to extended periods of bad coverage at sea because at one time there were not enough satellites up, then we are clearly discussing the history of navigation of the last century and nothing else. And when somebody one day writes a comparative study about "Black box navigation at Bowditch's time and today", I would like to see it discussed here on the list. The recent thread on GPS has largely turned into a discussion of dummies at sea, which has little to do with GPS. To pick just two examples. Consider, the boat running aground at Sable Island. I can't check the details now, but the way Dave presents it, it would have happened exactly the same way if the skipper would have navigated by celestial methods and set his wind vane self steering accordingly. His mistake was a navigational error that had nothing to do with GPS. Or take Royal Majesty. This wasn't a "GPS assisted accident". It could have happened with LORAN or any other technology. It could (theoretically) have happened with celestial navigation, confusing an almanac based on Paris with one based on Greenwich. They would have made consistent progress until ending up in the rocks 2 deg 20' E of where they thought they were. Their real mistake apparently was that they saw a marker and ignored it. Where the recreational boaters are concerned, there is a notion that GPS makes it easier for the dummies to go out. That is probably so, but this is also true for any navigational aid. However, there are those on whom all efforts are lost. One day I was sailing in the middle of Long Island Sound. A motor boat approached to speak me. The skipper wanted to know which way Long Island was. Thank God these people exist. What else would we talk about in the bar? But let us not confuse a discussion of a particular technology with a discussion of seamanship. Herbert Prinz