NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
R: Role of CN at sea
From: Federico Rossi
Date: 2004 Oct 13, 12:44 +0200
From: Federico Rossi
Date: 2004 Oct 13, 12:44 +0200
Hi, Just a few words on the topic. The situation described by George, as he himself stated, is not likely to repeat itself since now the coverage of GPS satellite network is complete (even though a boat can still experience electric and electronic failures), but the example in my opinion highlights a key point of the whole discussion, i.e. the role of dead reckoning. Celestial navigation wasn't "killed" by GPS, in fact many other systems like LORAN were developed prior to GPS that (without reaching GPS accuracy) were meant to assist navigators providing them with a countinously checked position and freeing them from the quirks of the weather. The point is that GPS navigators (I'm talking about boats and not cruisers) sometimes seem they have forgotten DR principles, they regard the practice of estimating and checking their position with the well known methods of coastal navigation (and why not, of celestial navigation) as a waste of time, thus losing the opportunity to interpret the effect of the currents, of the wind, the behaviour of the boat, and to forecast the corrections needed to follow a certain route (and eventually to cross check their electronic instrumentation). But maybe I'm only fond of celnav and lovers are rarely impartial, you know.........