In Ryk writes:

I was chatting in the yacht club bar last night about course keeping
at night, and how hard it can be to steer a tight compass course, and
how variable you get steering to other indicators like wind and stars.
Today that leads me to wondering about whether a tight course is
particularly valuable with modern instruments.

Yes, a tight course is important near shore or other hazards, and
essential in traffic, but is it necessary out on open water? 15
degrees of wandering costs less than 4 percent in course made good and
few cruisers put the effort into trimming sails that efficiently. A DR
track can only be as good as the course keeping. Are there other
reasons than DR to try to steer a tighter course?

Ryk

You do not say anything about other ramifications, for example are you
just daysailing and want to get around a certain island and come back
home or longer trip, an overnight crossing of a body of water or perhaps
crossing an ocean. Or are there any tidal changes to be considered. One
question you should always keep in mind are navigational hazards, shoals
or heavy traffic.

In some cases the shorters route is not the fastest. Perhaps sailing a
bit higher than the course getting you directly to the destination is
not the best, perhaps sailing a bit closer to the wind gives you better
angle to the waves and then later on you can use the spinnaker after
falling off a bit. If the tide is crossing your path it might be better
to be upstream when you make your "final" corrections to the course, so
you do not have to fight the tide in nearing the destination.

I do not see a reason why you should be bound to the tight course to
your destination if there are any considerations giving you a bigger
advantage or more comfortable ride.

- Lauri Tarkkonen