"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
Who has the time to maintain a manual DR track when running at any
kind of speed in congested waters?

My experience has been that waters are usually only congested when the
navigation and visibility are easy enough that you don't need to keep
a running plot on paper. I'm sure there are places that this is isn't
true and I would have the best GPS I could afford if I spent much time
in them. A larger vessel constrained by draft in traffic that was
ranging over a larger area with few fixed navigation aids would be a
good example.

Piloting without GPS now comes into the realm of a sport in itself
(sort of like making a vessel go somewhere without an engine). The
mountain climbing analogy holds. You do it in specific places for the
experience and satisfaction of achieving it. You wouldn't try to get
to a job interview in Manhattan that way.

Speed is also a factor. I spent a couple months trying to decide
whether to buy a power boat or a sail boat. I always envisioned the
power boat with a big GPS, radar, and all the stuff I'm used to from
these boats I associate with professionally:

http://home.maine.rr.com/rlma/WHOIrv.htm

I'm used to congested waters. I used to go out on a busy Sunday
afternoon in a Soling on Boston harbor with someone (usually a girl)
who had never been in a boat before, set the spinnaker, and sail
around. I used to think I was a hot ****. Now I'm old enough to know
that I was just arrogant. I never had a problem with the spinnaker
though and have only returned to the mooring with a hole in the boat
once in my life (on the port side, fortunately). That was the day I
met my wife.

--

Roger Long