Day 11: Dolphins Sighting

4/27/2010, Tuesday, 1700 Zulu, Lat. 26 2.7 N, Long. 092 40.8 W, Day 11

We are currently 232 nm from Galveston and should be making landfall this time two days from now. Things should be winding down. All the obstacles we had to worry about seem to pass us one by one. Navigation, wind, fuel, water, weather, all these concerns are not much of an issue. That is if Mother Nature cooperates with us with her weather. But, this doesn’t seem to be so. Got up at 0600 and Terry said you better sit down before I tell you this. I tried to gather my strength and see what was in store for us today. The weather fax he just received is telling us there is another cold front approaching and like the one we had two days ago, the wind will be clocking to the north and we have to beat again. “Great”, I said, as I just put on fresh clean clothes and now we have to get sprayed again.

We had a good breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast with butter and strawberry jam with fruit juice to give us energy to face the day. We now have all the sails up and beating to weather on a starboard tack with a heading of 285 M. Galveston bears 328 M. We are still 43 degrees off. I put Auto into Wind mode and set it at 32 degrees apparent angle and he will keep the boat at that wind angle in anticipation of the wind shift to the north. It will hopefully make up the 43 degrees difference. Wind has been shifting the last two hours from 319 to 330 to 344.

I love passage making. It has many facets. Sailing is only part of it. You have to have proper cruise planning in order to have a successful passage. These are as follow: 1. Crew Selection: you need to find crew that is compatible with you so there will be no mutiny (I kid you not). There are also health and medical issues of each crew member to be concerned about. The boat is only so big and living together in tight quarters under stressful conditions can ruin many friendships. 2. Provisioning: you have to plan for food, fuel, water, and first aid kits so you have enough for the passage. A well-fed and healthy crew is a happy crew. 3. Weather: this is very important so you are not putting your crew, boat and yourself in harms way by taking unnecessary risks. 4. Communication: you have to ensure you can communicate with other ships and land in case of emergency. That means have your VHF (Very High Frequency) radio, SSB radio, EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon), Weather Fax,....etc. in working order. 5. Budgeting: you need to know how much you need to spend in terms of money, cruising time…etc. 6. Navigation: ensure you have all the necessary skills and equipment to safely take you from point A to point B. Terry has done a wonderful and superhuman job on cruise planning and has addressed all these elements. That’s why this one is a happy passage.

Navigation at sea is one of the main things that attracted me to sailing. It consists of four categories: Dead Reckoning (DR) or Deduced Reckoning, Piloting, Electronic Navigation and finally Celestial Navigation.

DR is a basic skill a navigator must have. It involves a working watch (not the kind that can only tell time accurately twice a day), hand held compass, charts, pencils, dividers, parallel rulers, erasers and paper. To keep a DR plot, one has to keep a log of a starting fix position and keep track of every course and speed change and plot it on a chart with the correct time. You have to know how to keep a LOP (line of position), LOM (line of motion), keep a fix, running fix, estimate fix... Learn how to account for current’s set and drift (direction & strength), take bearings, relative bearings, dangerous bearings…etc. Christopher Columbus was a very good DR Navigator, that’s how he managed to find the new world.

Piloting, as I like to call it, eye ball navigation basically involves a pair of sharp eyes and a detailed chart to correctly identify buoys, beacons, channel markers, and landmarks to safely guide a boat into or out of harbors or anchorages.

Electronic Navigation involves learning how to use a GPS (Global Positioning System), Radar, Auto Pilots, Electronic Chart Plotters.

And lastly, Celestial Navigation which involves, using a sextant (a glorified protractor), almanac, reduction tables and all the equipment used in DR. It basically measures the precise position of heavenly bodies (and I don’t mean the female kind, well it has been a long cruise and can’t help to have my mind wander). You have 7 planets and 54 navigable stars to choose from to find a fix. One has to learn how to use a sextant, identify the planets or stars, take the sight reading, and do the calculation using the almanac and reduction tables. It is quite tedious.

If you just do day sailing, knowing piloting will get you home. If you do coastal sailing within sight of land, you need to know DR. That is the basic stuff, and if you go off-shore and out of sight of land, you need to know celestial navigation. (In my humble opinion)

Well, that is the old school of thought. With the advancement of marine electronics, many sailors just buy and learn to use GPS and electronic chart plotters and off they go on their cruise. They are easy to learn and use, and quite accurate. This often involves pushing a button or turning a dial. It is fine and dandy until the equipment fails, or worse, is hit by lightning and all electrical systems on board are fried. Then what do you do? You are not very smart if you go off without any electronic equipment, for it makes navigation much easier and more accurate, but you are equally foolish going off not having any of the DR, piloting and celestial navigation skills.

And this is my little presentation according to what I know about navigation.

As I was writing this, Terry just yelled “dolphins sighting!” So I took my camera to the bow and took about 50 shots. There were about 10 to 15 dolphins playing with our bow waves and having fun. Hope they don’t die from this.

Dinner last night was Mahi Mahi with Butter Orange Sauce served with Peas and Carrots Couscous.

Our 24 hours noon-to-noon run was 141 nm.

Thank you Bryce, Michelle, Geraldine, Bill, Bob and Kathy, Lindsay and Marlies for your lovely e-mails, Terry and I will try to keep our sanity intact for two more days to make landfall. I need to clean my glasses so I can do some good piloting.