Re: [Paddlewise] GPS-Not

There is a more or less famous story, in circles of competition sailors,
from before the time of GPS navigation. A sailor, under full sail in the
middle of a race, looked at his log and at the tidal charts, and decided
that according to his information he was actually moving backwards.
Keeping his sails up, he secretly dropped his anchor, and indeed: When
the anchor hit the seabottom he saw his waterspeed increasing. He won
the race.

Using GPS would mean that everybody would drop his anchor as standard
procedure. Whether this is an advantage of GPS or not is up to you.

Of course, electronics can fail when you most need them. So can the
human brain. My intelligence has been tested a few weeks ago, and
although I may consider myself "gifted", I realize I am especially
gifted in getting lost. In navigation, my GPS is much more reliable then
my wandering mind. People tend to have limitless faith in their own
abilities, much more then in technology. That's why we have so many
traffic accidents. The only time my GPS gave me a wrong bearing, I had
entered a wrong waypoint.

Niels.
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