As a newbie to sailing, I have been keenly interested in how we plan out our daily sailing routes. Captain Rod has our overall route planned out but each day we get into the nitty gritty of plotting our specific route out in great detail. To do this, both high and low tech methods are used.
In the image here you can see a compass is being used to compute out the distance of a proposed route on a paper chart. The distance between the compass legs represents one nautical mile and the compass is "walked" along the route to get total distance. 5 steps of the compass would equal 5 nautical miles. 'Who cares what the distance is?' you might be thinking. Well, distance takes time to cross in the boat and the Quijote can only go so fast. If we know when we will reach a certain passage for example, we can be sure to get there at slack tide when the currents are minimal. If we did not do this planning we might face a 9 knot current as we try to cross thru the passage -- which is faster than out boat could ever go against it.
High tech navigation aids on the Quijote include a Furuno navigation station that plots our current location on a colored digital map at all times. This station is visible to whomever is piloting the boat and is constantly referenced. Before each day's journey, waypoints are entered into the navigation station. These come from consulting numerous other sources like guide books, paper charts, digital maps on a PC. Each information source offers its own perspective on the complex coastline, indicating for example hazards, depth, shipping lanes. Sometimes the information from two sources conflicts slightly and we have to choose which one to believe. When underway, to keep us on our toes, we write down various datum into a paper logbook at each waypoint including barometric pressure, windspeed, engine hours logged and so forth. Waypoint by waypoint we are making it up the coast!
(written by Bob Bennett)
