 Check out the bookstore at IRBS.com |
|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
Subject: Taken aback
From: Peter Fogg (ffive@XXX.XXX)
Date: Sun Oct 20 2002 - 15:13:56 EDT
Am enjoying this thread on the finer points of turning a square rigger.
Of course far from being enthusiasts the crews of those good ole days
were often shanghai-ed, men from (literally) the gutter who may have
fallen down drunk and found themselves the next morning not just
hung-over but with a whole new career before the mast. They were
unlikely to be capable of reading and writing, let alone having enjoyed
any other education, yet some of them succeeded in rising through the
ranks and even acquiring their own commands. That this was most likely
to happen by treachery and violence is not the point here, they had to
learn to navigate and it is a credit to them that they did, by hook or
by crook. Of course this may have meant little more than running a DR
log and taking a noon sight for latitude when they could. My favourite
story is of one of these old scoundrels who would sit happily in the sun
with his wooden leg crossed over the other, and reduce his sight with a
pencil on the timber. It was all he seemed to need, the rest -
declination and so forth - was (according to legend) carried in his
head.
Usually he was in no hurry. However my own sails were taken aback by
Dan Hogan wrote: 'find a technique/system that you are comfortable with
and practice with it until you can reduce and plot a FIX in five(5)
minutes'
Wow. For a 3 body fix 5 minutes would be about right using the
electronic nav. calculator; but to begin with, using my own pencil would
take a few days, an hour or so at a time as opportunity and
concentration permitted. I was feeling pretty happy about now being able
to do the whole process in an hour or so. At sea my routine is to reduce
the evening sights with the calculator, but in the morning like to
spread all my books etc over the main table (those nav. desks are far
too small) and reduce and plot and plan away in a scene of increasing
disorder until I am thrown out, which I am ashamed to say is inevitable
come lunchtime. I'd better keep practising.
Coastal nav. gets done on the spot, LOPs plotted right onto the chart
with a soft pencil. We are lucky to have mild tides, I know the strong
tidal flows of some places complicate coastal navigational calculations
greatly.
'When you start on your journey to Ithaca,
then pray that the road is long,
full of adventure,
full of knowledge ................
that the summer mornings are many,
that you will enter ports seen for the first time
with such pleasure,
with such joy!' (Kostas Kavafis)
|