The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

The Times helped launch the new courses with a travel news snippet today.

I regularly find myself balancing the scientific explanations for something, natural observations of the same thing, historical accounts and even folklore. It can be a rich mix. This morning I came across a fun site that gives a good flavour of how diverse this subject can be in its page about the winter solstice.

A blog is not a blog without an occasional rant, so…

It strikes me that the world of navigation training has strayed a little off course. If you type “navigation courses” into Google you get nearly five and a half million results. I’d be prepared to wager that more than five million of these are associated with ‘traditional’ training. To my mind the majority of these are falling between two stools. They focus on using tools but not the best ones. The two ends of the spectrum are electronics and nature. Nobody, myself included, argues that natural methods are more accurate than electronics when it is working. Equally, nobody in their right mind would want to challenge someone holding a working GPS to a position-fixing competition using compass back-bearings. Where am I going with this?

Well, why do we concentrate the vast majority of our training and learning in the area that…

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Everywhere I go at the moment I am reminded of cycles. Not the type that the Dutch and Boris Johnson are so keen on, no, the natural cycles. The countryside is abuzz at the moment. My sons and I love it when we come across a combine harvester and tractor at work like this. I get excited because it reminds me that we are well past the summer solstice and can start looking forward to the autumnal equinox. Their reasons are probably better.

Time and navigation have a cosy relationship, as John Harrison, inventor of the chronometer that cracked the longitude problem in the 18th Century would attest. The sun, earth, moon and planets and stars have at times been seen as cogs in a huge clock.

So many natural phenomena take their orders from these bodies and tide is one of the best known of these. I took this photo of the tide running past a cardinal off Jersey this weekend. The cardinal is an easterly one, signalling that the safer water lay to the east of it. But could it tell us anything else? With two pieces of information, time and tide table, we can discern others such as the speed of the water and its direction. If we had no other references: no sight of land, no chart, no compass, no GPS… that small patch of water could reveal not only…

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I have found myself at airports a lot recently and it occurred to me that there is not very much to inspire those interested in nature about them in general. It does sometimes take a bit of lateral thinking to spot the clues in places like that.

Some man-made structures can give us a clue to help us on our way until nature comes to our aid again. Churches are a good example. A lot of churches are aligned East-West and this can offer a short term hand if all else is proving confusing, not unusual in a built-up area. The problem with a lot of artificial clues like this though is that they are very short-lived, they offer a clue for a few seconds or minutes at best, but then disappear out of sight and leave the navigator on their own again. Airports, with a little lateral and logical thinking,…

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Trying to be positive when there have only been a brace of sunbeams all August so far, I have been tinkering with the overcast shadow method. The theory being that plenty of light filters through the overcast clouds and that a thin blade can be used to average the source of this light, ie. the sun. It is better than nothing, sometimes, but it is important to be aware that the shadow will be thrown opposite the brightest light and there are no guarantees that this is where the sun is. Uneven cloud or tree cover are just two of the things that can throw it completely.

I’ve been reading accounts from British light aircraft pilots who have experienced difficulty in orienting themselves when flying in the southern hemisphere. The reason for this ‘wrongwayitis’ is fairly well understood and stems from the disagreement, usually subconscious, of where we expect to see the sun relative to our travel and where it actually is.

I was a bit shocked this afternoon when returning from Southampton airport to discover that I was experiencing a similar sensation, a feeling of ‘wrongwayitis’. I was driving through heavy rain and the signs told me clearly that I was heading the right way, or roughly east along the M27. There were even natural clues confirming it at the roadside in the shape of trees. Rationally I knew that I was heading the right way and yet the feeling of wrongwayitis persisted for several minutes. A casual glance revealed that the sky was indeed brighter to…

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On some days it is easier than others to tell which way the wind blows.

Today we enjoyed a nice 30kts/Force 7/35mph/56kph, depending how you like your porridge.

Last night was one of those occasions where the moon was the natural navigator’s best option. At about 10pm the sky overhead was overcast with broken clouds down to nearer the horizon. The western glow of dusk was gone and the only objects that could be seen were Jupiter and the three-quarter Moon. The cloud meant no Polaris, and the bright moon in the only patch of open sky blotted out the other stars. The Moon plays hard to get at first but on nights like this it can be a very good friend.