At 04:27 10/04/98 -0700, Dave Kruger wrote: >I'm interested in anecdotal descriptions of crossings kayakers have >attempted under poor visibility (fog, mist, scudding clouds on the deck, >poor lighting, etc.). No anecdotes of my own, I'm afraid, but there is a good cautionary tale/trip report on the Irish sea kayaking association web site, "The Tide that turned too soon" http://homepages.iol.ie/~dwalco/tnd9.htm which is definitely worth a read. Where I have good experience of tides, I usually work on the assumption that there is a possible error of at least +/- 5 degrees in compass course, and wouldn't attempt a route unless crossings could be kept short enough to pretty much guarantee finding identifiable waypoints. Even in good visibility I try to look for routes where it is possible to 'aim off' to guaranteed which part of a coast line is the landfall. However, whatever the visibility when I depart, I aim to keep a track of my position, which in my current technologically challenged condition means dead reckoning if the visibility is poor. I guess that if you arrive at your estimated position for the target, and can't find it, you would need to either start a search pattern, and if that fails head off on a course which will (with a large margin for error) take you to where you know where you are again. I've experienced areas with tides which I would defy anyone without local knowledge to predict, thus rendering dead reckoning unreliable and so I don't know an area I tend to be pretty conservative in my choice of routes. A few years ago I would have scoffed at the idea of carrying a GPS, but now I'm considering one - but maybe that's just because they are almost the same price as a good compass ;-). I wonder though, do GPS owners attempt correspondingly more ambitious crossings than they did before they got their GPS ? Cheers Colin PS Maybe the good professor Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G, could enlighten us about some of the antiquarian methods of navigation. I feel confident that prior to the current GPS satellite system the inuit in their wisdom must have devised some sort of network of airborne crotch dirigibles to signpost the way through the northern dark and mists :-0 ______________________________________________________ Dr Colin Calder Centre for CBL in Land Use and Environmental Sciences (CLUES) MacRobert Building, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, AB24 5UA, UK, Scotland ______________________________________________________ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Apr 10 1998 - 07:00:38 PDT
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