The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Last night I accidentally stumbled on one of the best images of ocean swell that I have come across. I was looking at Essaouira on Google Earth and happened to notice that the image showed some really clear swell patterns.

In this image we can see the sets of swell arriving from the top-left of the picture (northwest). We can then see the distinct and different patterns that are formed as these swells interact with Mogador island off the coast of Essaouira. The swell diffracts through the gaps either side of the island and then these two patterns meet again in a thin line that runs from the top of the island to the land just above the large breaking wave.

Down at sea level it takes a lifetime to interpret these patterns, but it is so much easier to see how the great Polynesian and Micronesian navigators would have…

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On Friday I enjoyed a warming cup of hot chocolate with adventurer and ocean rower extraordinaire, Sarah Outen. We arranged to meet in Brighton and I had hoped to saunter between the boutiques and purveyors of rare tat, before pulling up a chair in a bohemian cafe near the sea. Instead I sprinted twenty yards from the train station, felt the cold heavy rain run down my neck and then ducked into a disappointingly ordinary peddler of hot drinks.

Fortunately I got a chance to escape all that by listening to Sarah’s memories of rowing, alone, across the Indian Ocean. She experienced plenty of drama as you might imagine, and this will all out in her book that is being published early next year, but the details that seized me were the ones that many others may have found prosaic.

Sarah described how the birds changed as she…

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Stumbled across a bit of a gem this evening. Marion Owen, ‘master gardener’, describing the moment she decided to become a gardener at the end of a long passage from Guam to Seattle.

If navigation is about where we are and where we are going, then the senses have a bigger part to play than many realise, and not just physically. Marion’s passage about a passage beautifully illustrates that honing our senses can get us to our destination in more ways than one. She found land and a new career.

Here are some excerpts:

‘Wall-to-wall ocean, especially in the warm tropics, does something to your senses…

…salt crystals form on the decks and railings–even your skin– like granules of sugar. With the acrid smell of ocean water and sweat, always sweat, mixed with suntan lotion and more salt air, your nose is dulled with monotony…

Leaning against the metal…

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