EXPERT ON BOARD
Sometimes, rather than knowing where you are, it’s easier to know where you aren’t, says Justin Morton
When you first start to navigate it can seem complex and pretty nuanced, but in reality what you are doing falls into two overarching styles. The first style of navigation is to know exactly where you are all the time, so you can manoeuvre to get to where you want to go and stay safe whilst you do it. This is the way commercial shipping, Naval warships, satnavs and, increasingly, your chartplotter, navigate. It’s therefore natural to want to do likewise.
The second, very old, style is rather than know exactly where you are, you instead know precisely where all the dangers are in relation to you. That is, you definitely know where you are not. You can then safely manoeuvre to your chosen location.
CHARTPLOTTER DRAWBACKS
‘Knowing’ where you are is however very different from being told where you are. A chart plotter can tell you where you are but it is meaningless until you ask ‘So what?’, such as, ‘Do I have to worry about those rocks?’ It always requires some level of thinking, which has to be done there and then to help you orientate yourself. Consequently, because our position is always changing, ‘knowing’ where you are all of the time is time consuming and taxing. Chart plotters tempt us into doing this type of navigation, and a symptom of relying totally on chart plotter navigation is that uneasy feeling you get when having zoomed in far enough to
