NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Principles and Being Practical
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Sep 4, 16:57 -0700
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Sep 4, 16:57 -0700
Mr. Fogg,a very well stated position.I was wondering if it was only me who had similar feelings on this matter.I was going to post some of my recent experiances during a transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic but when I signed back in and read the posts I decided not to.What was being discussed at lenght,at least to me,a professional and practical sailor,was irrelivant as are most of the discussions concerning squezeing accuracies less than 0.1 nm.Fine for land sailors but not an overrideing concern at sea. I've had people contact me off list from time to time,and continue to welcome them, with questions concerning practical,real life navigation procedures and practices.More than one stated they were intimadated by the answers they read to other questions asked on list. I will continue to monitor the discussions.Delete them when I feel they are irrelivant to me.Read them when I think I can glean a nugget of information from them.I will contribute to the topic when able. -----Original Message----- From: Peter Fogg [mailto:ffive@TPG.COM.AU] Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 15:49 To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM Subject: Principles and Being Practical People learning navigation need to absorb a number of principles, necessary building blocks. Here are a few: The earth is a sphere 1 nautical mile = 1.852 kilometres The fix position lies at the centre of the 'cocked hat'. Then as the navigator becomes more proficient, he/she learns that each of these propositions (and others) is rather more complicated than its most simple expression. However, in terms of practical navigation the complexities are often irrelevant. Recently I've noticed a number of List members dropping out. I wonder why? Evidently they were not finding what they hoped to find. The present Nav. List seems to be dominated by crabby old men who seem to love the detailed complexities, and take great relish in arguing about the number of angels able to dance on the head of a pin to an absurd and mind-numbing extent, in the process flaunting their superior knowledge and understanding. I don't have any problem with this as such, to each their own. On the contrary, I remain grateful to the List and all its contributors, you have collectively taught me a lot and I'm still learning. But to the extent that the List has an aim of promoting and encouraging traditional methods of navigation I suspect that too much of this is damaging and counter-productive. What it does is reinforce what many may have suspected all along - that nav. is all too hard, too difficult, too complicated, too incomprehensible, and that they might as well give up and rely on their GPS. This, to my mind, is a far greater potential danger than not knowing a fix position to some nth degree. And its not true either, pretty well anyone can learn the basic skills. This was proven by so many uneducated sailors from the days of sail who did learn, often without being able to read let alone knowing much about numbers. As recently appeared on the list: 'What's struck me as so remarkable about (Columbus and his navigation) is how wrong he was on so many things, and yet how little that aspect of his story actually matters to history.' Well said and very relevant. What to do about it? Well the stated philosophy is fine: 'PLEASE respond with your results and thinking on these exercises to the NAVIGATION list at large. If you have questions or problems, A lot of folks on the list are knowledgeable and willing to help. Any questions or doubtful areas will be responded to promptly. Let us hear from you soon!' but what has happened to its practice? Some weeks ago I posted my go at one current Silicon Sea exercise and then details of a problem I was having with the one before, and I have yet to hear a peep from any expert.