The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

… after many years of nearly getting round to it.

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My thanks to Tim Hopwell for this email:

Hi Tris,

Hope all is well.  I thought of you on Wednesday evening whilst at the RGS for a talk by Ranulph Fiennes, Knox-Johnston and John Simpson (a spin off from the ‘Top Dogs’ series they produced in aid of the Transglobe Expedition Trust).

Sir Knox made a very interesting point regarding his round the world trip in 1968. Due to his navigational equipment being so basic by today’s standards (he had a barometer which came free with some Guinness) he developed the skill of being able to judge where land was and how far he was from it by observing/sensing the wave reflection ie. The effect on the water of the reflection of the waves back out to sea once they had hit dry land.  He reckoned he could judge accurately up to about 20 miles, whilst the Polynesians who are the renowned experts in…

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I was in Brighton yesterday afternoon and the coast was being hit hard by a southerly gale. When the wind is this strong it is interesting feeling how its direction twists and turns round the streets of a town like Brighton. It never turns a full 180 degrees, but regularly gusts out from alleyways at right angles to the main wind. The smudge in the sky in the top left of the photo is a flock of birds.

…and he was high in the sky, which reminded me of one of the simplest and most beautiful of natural navigational celestial techiques. Orion is a great help in finding East or West, but there is a method for finding direction that works even if you have no idea what object you are looking at in the sky. It takes time to apply accurately, but it can be used anywhere in the world and applies to all the stars, the moon, the sun and all the planets – even if you have no idea which one you are looking at.

The moment a celestial object reaches its highest point in the sky it will be due north or south. Simples! As those meerkats like to say. Well, the principle is beautifully simple, but the practice is a bit more involved. Hence the use of shadow sticks, and sextants for that matter.

…

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The wind brings with it the character of the land, or water, it passes over. It adopts signature scents and temperatures and if the land of an area is known well enough, it is often possible to deduce the direction that a wind is coming from by analysing its character. Gustave Flaubert does a humorous and divine job of exposing this concept through the mouth of the young chemist in his novel, Madame Bovary:

‘And, as it happens, we are sheltered from the north wind by the Forest of Argueil on one side, from the west wind by the Cote Saint-Jean on the other; and this heat, you see, which on account of the water vapour given off by the river and the considerable presence of cattle in the meadows, which exhale, as you know, a good deal of ammonia, that’s to say nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, just nitrogen and…

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On holiday I did try very hard not to think too much about navigation, but wherever I am I cannot resist checking that the sun is behaving itself appropriately considering my latitude and the season. At 7 degrees north, Phuket is in the northern hemisphere and the tropics and because the sun is now well south of the equator the short midday shadow is cast towards the north. Nearer June this same pencil would cast a shadow in the opposite direction at midday, to the south.

This photo was actually taken eleven minutes after local midday, which is logical since it was taken in the west of Phuket and Phuket itself is in the west of the country, about 2 degrees west of Bangkok. The sun will be at its highest point over Phuket about eight minutes after it has reached its highest point when viewed from Bangkok.

If you are feeling peculiar then it is probably best not to venture outside tonight. The gravitational pull of the full moon’s alignment with the sun might have strange effects as it pulls on the water in your brain. Or so the ancients believed.

Alternately, you might want to do something that GPS users would see as a symptom of madness and use it to find east in the early evening, south at midnight and west before dawn.

I took this photo about ten minutes ago (18.23 GMT), looking east.

We were in the hot and wet season in Phuket last week. The skies were in constant turmoil at all levels. The warm humid air accelerated upwards in an often fruitless search for some air at the same temperature.

The Thai fishermen’s longboats had seen it all before and bobbed nonchalantly as the storms built and subsided on all sides, through the day and night.

This just in from Richard Webber, Natural Navigator alumnus, researcher and correspondent:

‘After a long walk round Mam Tor and Lose Hill near Castleton, we
rested in a café for tea and slices of Derbyshire curd pudding.

Having been infected with the “Which Way Is South” Virus I was drawn
to the tree near by – see the pic. Half still had leaves while half
didn’t. My hypothesis was that the south facing side would hold its
leaves longer – given more light and warmth. I checked the map to get
a feel for where south was and, indeed, the leafy side was facing due
south. Looking at the branch structure I think this points to the
north being on the left of the picture where the branches seem to
growing more upwards than outwards – as on the leafy, south facing
side. Am I right?

And Oliver, aged 16, suggested that the birds might also be roosting
on the warmer, south facing…

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… from a fortnight’s family break in Phuket, Thailand. Apologies if anyone has been trying to contact me without luck, my phone would not let me update my messages.

I made a special effort not to make too much effort, this had long been scheduled as a ‘meet the family again after an intensive two months on the book‘ trip. The plan was to make like this Gecko and flop in the light and warmth. There were a few natural navigation treats that had me scrambling for the camera and they will pop up here in time…