It is fascinating. I have been sailing coastally for 25 years. I have done
the entire west coast from British Columbia to Acapulco. Most of it
multiple times. Maybe 12000 miles or so. I have gunkholed a whole lot of
the coast in between. Done Catalina a few 100 times. I have never found a
situation where a hand held compass position was useful. Yes I learned to
do one and actually bought one early on...may still have it in one of the
boat bags...but no I have never found a single place where it was useful.

I have entered San Francisco in heavy fog. I used GPS for navigation and
radar for collision avoidance. That passage could not have been done safely
without GPS and would have been very uncomfortable without radar.

I have entered Bahia Maria north of Cabo in the middle of the night with a
storm raging. It is not the world's most challenging entry but it offers
you the opportunity to kill yourself if you are not careful. And it is
known the charts have a substantial inaccuracy. With GPS and radar it is a
reasonably safe task.

Why would one not teach the skills that lead to success rather than those
which involve unacceptable risk?

Jim Donohue


"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 20:51:28 -0800, "Jim Donohue"

said:

Not my experience. I'm teaching navigation to my 26 year old daughter,
and
she's thrilled with how she can verify our position with an LOP and look
at
her DR plot and correlate it to the objects she sees. We have a LORAN
aboard, but so far it hasn't interested her.

Ohh stop...what utter nonsense. Interesting navigation occurs when you
can't see anything and there is nothing for the radar to see. Then do
that
for 6 days. Then end up within 10 meters of where you aimed for.

Whatta jerk.

Interesting navigation is in the eye of the beholder, and to someone who
hasn't done it before it is as I described.

On what does she base her LOP? Wishful thinking? A voice in her brain?
For the sake of rationale behavior teach her how to use the real tools
than
you can teach her the hobby backups if she cares.

Same thing people doing piloting have been basing an LOP on for years.
Bearing taken with the hand bearing compass.

What seems to be your problem, Jim, wrong time of the month?

Only a fool would teach someone to navigate by GPS alone.