It was the Royal Institute of Navigation’s Annual General Meeting yesterday and I got to shake hands with Prince Philip as he presented me with my fellowship certificate.  I am now allowed to put FRIN at the end of my name, which is very nice and a great honour but not something that will find its way to the end of my emails very often. Hopefully that explains what all the weird acronyms in the title are though.

Out of curiosity, I just searched Twitter for ‘Royal Institute of Navigation’ and much to my pleasant surprise found the following entry:

1 day ago from Royal Household

The Royals are tweeting! Innit? Respect…

All the best,

Tristan FRIN (oops, sorry, it just slipped out, honest…)

PS. The photo is from last year’s AGM, this year’s aren’t out yet.

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If you look closely at these two pictures you can see how the aircraft contrail cuts the lower cumulus clouds at a slightly different place in the second picture. It is not dramatic, but one clue that the upper winds at the altitude of the aircraft, probably about 35,000 ft, may be moving in a different direction to the lower winds moving the clouds. The upper wind direction is likely to be the more consistent and can be gauged by lining contrails or cirrus clouds up against fixed features like high landmarks, or even by lying under a tree.

I took this picture looking south over Halnaker Hill, the windmill can just be seen poking out at the top. On my outdoor courses I sometimes stop early on and ask people to give me as many clues to direction as possible. Quite often this leads to much frenzied studying of lichens and branches and lots of good ideas. More often than not I find myself having to point out a big one. ‘What’s the biggest clue you can see?’ Some might say the shape of the land, but very few spot the coast itself. If visibility is poor I resist the urge to borrow from a Mr Basil Fawlty and say, ‘It’s there between the land and sky.’

This is the full moon from two nights ago, rising amongst the clouds. The picture was taken at about 11 o’ clock and so we are looking close to southeast.

The following is an excerpt from the excellent website,

Hōkūle‘a Worldwide Voyage

Hōkūle‘a deep sea navigator and captain Bruce Blankenfeld shares with new voyagers some of the knowledge passed on to him by master navigator Mau Piailug.

Using Papa Mau’s star compass, he teaches some of the basics of traditional Polynesian wayfinding.

Watch the navigation lesson.

I ran a private course in the South Downs on Saturday for a group of four friends. One of them gave me a great example of using our senses and a little lateral thought to better connect with nature. Rachel lives southwest of Medway power station and said that she could tell when it was going to snow in winter because these were the only times she could smell the power station itself. The colder northeasterly winds bringing snowy weather and local smells with them.

A fun and full day for the Beginner’s Guide course at the RGS yesterday. I had been worried about the heat, but nobody seemed to mind – natural navigators are a hardy and positive-framed bunch as a whole!

One of the advantages of flying to Alderney on such a small airplane (Britten Norman Trislander) was that you could see well out of both sides. Apparently they have special dispensation to fly this route with only one pilot. Next time I might be tempted to sit nearer the front…

We spent the weekend on Alderney. We went there to muck about on the beaches and we were not disappointed. The water is still fresh at this time of year, but I cannot think of an island with better beaches.

This is a photo taken looking out to the Fort from Longis Beach on the southeastern part of the island. Alderney is famous for its powerful tides and you can see how churned up the water is getting on the left halft of the picture, as it races across the causeway.

It must take some dedication and effort from the spider to spin their webs, so it is no surprise that they have worked out ways of not wasting this effort. This is a picture I took of a web in the northeast lee of a gatepost.