The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

My research into this subject constantly leads me, very willingly, back to the thin line that runs, curving between philosophy, religion, science and nature. If such a line exists – discuss!

I would go so far as to say my work would be very awkward if my personal jury had come in unanimously in favour of any hard views in any of those areas. Sometimes there is a deep longing to know more about things that I know I likely never will. It is hard to articulate this sensation perfectly, but it would perhaps be summed up well by saying that it can sometimes be assuaged by Frank Lloyd Wright’s line, ‘I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.’

There are some natural phenomenon that deeply spiritual people jump up and down about and then point to, in a calm spiritual manner, but which secularists wave away nonchalantly…

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This morning I was woken by thunder at 4am and could not get back to sleep. Surely at some point I will be too old to get excited by a thunderstorm?!

Just experimenting with embedding one of my Libya video clips. I thought one of the Sahara might keep some of the rain away today. This one was actually taken by mistake – I meant to take a photo.

We spend most of our time looking horizontally. This morning was a misty one and looking out across the fields the mist felt thick and soup-like. Whenever the mist or fog settles in it is worth taking a moment to look up.

When we look vertically up we usually see the mist at its thinnest and it can sometimes be a pleasant surprise to realise that far from being completely smothered we’re actually in a thin blanket. This is a lesson that all pilots learn at some stage, usually with a little adrenalin mixed in.

It is not unusual in a light aircraft to fly over your airfield and look down through a thin mist to see the runways clearly, only to find that a minute later the slanting angle back to the runway can make the whole airfield ‘disappear’ – a real pulse-raiser the first few times it…

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I’ve been experimenting over the past few nights, as we approached the full moon, with a technique that I’ve been working on that combines two others. It is possible to find direction using the moon in a number of ways: by its shadow, by using a tangent to its crescent and by understanding its phase relationship with the sun.

A very indirect method, that I have not come across anywhere else before, is to use moonlight reflected off cloud edges to reveal the direction of the moon, then to use an understanding of its phase to determine direction. Like a lot of methods for finding your way using the moon, it sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, but it does still come with some inbuilt errors. I will try to persevere and experiment with this method some…

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A walk in the woods yesterday revealed some natural and unnatural clues.

This primrose, the only one in the area, was unsurprisingly in a south-facing spot. The thick bed of south-facing moss that surrounds it on the beech roots should not surprise us. Moss grows in abundance close to the ground where moisture levels remain generally high, even in south-facing places.

The technique of trail blazing, marking trees to show others the way is ancient, but the chalk markings on this beech tree were a little disconcerting. Apologies, the picture is out of focus as I was hurrying to catch up with others, but hopefully you can make out the following: arrows showing the way, the words, ‘Tom’ and ‘This Way’ and a picture of a sad, perhaps perplexed or even angry face. Hopefully Tom is less sad now, having…

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I came across this story this morning about a pet dog, Sophie Tucker, that was washed overboard in rough conditions during a sailing holiday off the Australian coast and swam five miles to the small uninhabited island of St Bees.

The story focuses on the distance swum, which is incredible enough, but makes no mention of how the dog found the island. We can rule out vision, because she would not have been able to see further than about twenty feet in front of her in those conditions. Even in flat calm a dog would barely able to see the tops of trees five miles away because of the curvature of the earth’s surface.

Smell is the most likely solution, but that points to an even tougher dog, because to follow the smell of land she would have had…

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My friend, John, who certainly qualifies as working in one of the more unusual fields, has just returned from an unusual work trip to Venezuela and the Orinoco Delta. John is also an alumni of my natural navigation school and a reporter in the sailing world, see Captain JP’s Log. I asked him to do me a favour, to keep his senses alert and to see if he could glean any useful wayfinding scraps whilst out there. He did well, very well. Here is an excerpt from his ‘report’!

I tried to find out how the Warao people who live in the delta navigate and as I speak no Spanish and they no English (they have their own language and actually not all of them speak Spanish) I had to use our Venezuela guide as a translator. However English was her fourth language after Spanish, Italian and…

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There is a fly buzzing around me at the moment that is seriously dopey, it seems to me that its best days might be behind it. It keeps landing on my hand or face and lingering for a dangerously long time, like its will to live has evaporated.

This reminded me of my trip to the Sahara last month. All signs of life in a desert are interesting at some level, usually including some navigation clues. Flies were no exception. They were not a big problem, and we could go for several hours without noticing them, but then they would appear in a swarm business (I just Googled the collective noun for flies and apparently it is either ‘swarm’ or ‘business’. I love the latter.)

Sometimes their appearance was easy to understand, if we were closing in on an oasis or wadi with some vegetation. These were…

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This morning brought with it a nice thick radiation fog, which the sun will probably burn off soon. There is not forecast to be much wind today, but even a breeze deals with radiation fog, usually anything over 12 knots.

No visible sun, no discernible wind, these are the conditions that remind us that the trees reflect their environment over a long period. They act as a giant USB stick of data about thousands of days of sun and wind. All we need to do is tune our senses and look for it. The thin branch in the bottom left of the picture has been curved upwards by the prevailing southwest winds over time.

Spent an enjoyable day with Perry and Graham from Yachting Monthly yesterday. I cannot possibly reveal what was discussed, but keep an eye out for it over the summer.