Yachting Monthly Article
Below is a transcript of an article about The Natural Navigator book, published in Yachting Monthly in June 2010.
When it comes to
‘natural navigation’
the simplest set of
sailing directions ever
issued must be the
advice for crossing the Atlantic to
the Caribbean: ‘Sail south until the
butter melts and then turn right.’
Some people have a natural gift – a
‘sense of direction’ – and can instinctively
find their way with an accuracy that
totally defeats others. Others are so
dependent on technology and electronics
that they’ve totally lost their natural
connection with nature.
‘We live in a world of screens, checklists
and never-ending acronyms,’ says Tristan
Gooley, author of a new book, The Natural
Navigator. With the death of American
adventurer Steve Fossett, Tristan is now
the only living person to have both piloted
a plane solo and sailed singlehanded
across the Atlantic Ocean. ‘Over the years,’
he says, ‘I’ve become familiar with GPS,
AIS, VHF, UHF, SSB… the list runs on. It’s
a world I needed to understand, but not
one I wanted to live in.’
When he took off in a single-engine
aircraft from Goose Bay, Newfoundland,
in May 2007, he had two compasses, three
GPS units and about half a dozen other
radio navigation aids. ‘But it was the white
glow above a vast dark blue to the north-
east that made sense of the direction for
me. This is what I remember vividly, not
the dials and screens.’
It’s his sense of connection – ‘the
contact with the world around me’ – that
excited Tristan and led him to research the
subject of instrument-free navigation.
‘Everyone who has gone a few weeks or
months without wearing a watch will have
noticed that their “inner clock” starts
to run more accurately,’ he says.
Tristan Gooley Biography
Tristan has led
expeditions in five
continents, climbed
mountains in Europe,
Africa and Asia, sailed
small boats across
oceans and piloted small aircraft to Africa
and the Arctic. He was awarded the Royal
Institute of Navigation’s Certificate of
Achievement by the Duke of Edinburgh for
becoming the
only living
person to
have both
flown solo
and sailed
singlehanded
across the
Atlantic. The
vice chairman
of the travel
company
Trailfinders,
Tristan (36)
is a lifelong
sailor and
a fellow of
the Royal
Institute of
Navigation.
He now
teaches the
lost art of natural navigation, on land and sea. His
next courses take place at the Royal Geographical
Society on 27 May and 8 July, and West Dean
College, Sussex, on 26 June. For more details, see
his website: www.naturalnavigator.com.
Our five senses make natural navigation
entirely possible. The feel of the wind on
your face, the sight of changing clouds and
the movement of sun and stars, are clues
used by navigators for years. Polynesian
navigators looked at the way stars twinkle
to help them forecast rain and wind.
Intuition and ‘sixth sense’
Feeling the rhythm of the sea can also be
used to shape a course. There’s the story of
a skipper who awoke suddenly in the
middle of the night, in the middle of the
Pacific and rushed on deck, ordering his
crew to heave-to. Next morning a reef was
spotted less than a mile away. The
changing wave pattern had awakened this
lucky skipper’s intuitive, natural senses.
Then there is a sailor’s sixth sense. How
many times have you, as skipper or crew,
woken in your bunk from a deep,
exhausted sleep, sensing a change of
motion of the boat, perhaps because the
helmsman has gone off course, or the crew
have changed tack?
The smell of land, carried out to sea on
an offshore wind, has forewarned sailors
of a dangerous landfall long before the
advent of GPS waypoint alarms. ‘I’ll never
forget the sweet, fragrant and lightly
spiced smell of St Lucia in the Caribbean
after my first Atlantic crossing in Golden
Eye,’ recalls Tristan. Sailors over the ages
have savoured the scent of rosemary off
Spain, peat off the Falklands and orange
groves off the islands of Cape Verde.
Natural navigation is a skill not just for
survival, when our lives are in danger.
Tristan believes it’s a way to enrich a sea
voyage, without feeling the need to throw
all the electronics overboard. These days,
Yachtmaster exam
without any real
understanding of natural
navigation skills. ‘It
doesn’t mean modern
skippers are less capable
or more at risk, but many
will undertake voyages
across much duller and
more two-dimensional
seas than our ancestors.’
Pacific voyagers
Long before the days of
compass or chronometer,
the Polynesians were
master navigators over
huge expanses of ocean,
explains Tristan in his
new book. Less than one
per cent of the Pacific is
land, with thousands of
islands and atolls
scattered across the
ocean. Early navigators created ‘stick
charts’ using curved sticks to represent
wave patterns around atolls, with shells or
coral pebbles indicating islands.
Navigators would also memorise a ‘star
path’ – a sequence of stars for each course
sailed between islands. Some navigators
could remember hundreds of ‘star paths’.
Not surprisingly, Captain James Cook was
profoundly impressed by the Pacific
islanders’ skills and their best navigators
enjoyed a status in the social hierarchy not
far below that of a priest.
Signs in the sky
‘There is nothing about the movement of
the sun that cannot be understood by
its shadow,’ says Tristan. Wherever you
are in the world, the shortest shadow from
a stick will always form a perfect north–
south line at midday.
Clouds can also help navigators find
their way and spot low-lying islands
beyond the horizon. Since the sun heats
the land more quickly than water, warm
air rises, causing moist air to condense
and form a cloud.
The flights of birds is another of nature’s
signposts. ‘Most coastal birds like to set
out in the morning and return to land at
night, so it’s fair to assume that a flock of
such birds heading in a uniform direction
at dusk are likely indicating the direction
of land,’ says Tristan.
sailed from Tahiti to New Zealand in the
14th century is the same as that taken by
the long-tailed cuckoo each September.
Irish monks in the 6th century made
regular journeys between Ireland and
Iceland, following the migratory routes of
brent geese. ‘It’s highly likely these flight
paths acted as navigational pointers,’
Tristan says.
Read the sea
Apart from signs in the sky, natural
navigators ‘read’ the surface of the sea for
clues. All sailors look for the ripples that
reveal wind direction, and cat’s-paws,
indicating a breath of wind in a calm.
‘A gale blowing offshore can create
smaller waves than a much lighter wind
that has blown across hundreds of miles,’
says Tristan. ‘Like the motion of a whip,
a wave travels all the way down the whip
carrying a lot of energy. It can travel more
than 800 nautical miles.’
Waves travel in the same direction as
the wind but swell, which continues
across or even against the wind, is a more
dependable sign for natural navigators.
Identifying the difference between waves
and swells can be difficult.
‘Lying on deck is a common method for
detecting the rhythm in which the boat is
moving on the swell,’ says Tristan.
‘Balance comes into play, too, but learning
to tap into the physical sensation goes
further and deeper than that. An
experienced Pacific island sailor, Captain
Ward, reported that a man’s testicles were
the best apparatus for assessing swell.
Tristan explains.
The colour of the sea, though partly
influenced by the reflection of the colours
of the sky, also offers lots of clues. For
sailors navigating in areas of coral reefs,
the lighter the colour, the shallower the
water. Light blue to off-white sea usually
represents a sandy bottom and dark
patches could indicate a reef. In the
Pacific, the Caribbean and even parts of
the Mediterranean, some of these shoal
areas may not be indicated on a chart.
For landlubbers, Tristan has a whole
new set of nature’s ‘signposts’ – from the
direction in which satellite dishes point to
which side moss grows on trees and the
migrating routes of city commuters.
GPS is not the enemy, Tristan stresses,
but technology is blindfolding our
natural instincts. In our 21st century
virtual world of computers, robots and
avatars, natural navigation is a way of
plugging ourselves back into our
natural humanity. W
Stick charts, made from palm trees and coconut fibre, showed
wave patterns around islands, with shells indicating islands
A rough indication of angles in
degrees can be found by using
the back of the hand thumb in
line with the arm and aimed
along the centreline of the boat
towards the bow or stern. The
right or left hand is used
according to whether you’re
taking a bearing to port or
starboard. By looking down on
the back of your hand with all
fingers extended, the index
(longest) finger indicates 45°
and the little finger 90°. First
and third fingers are at 25° and
60°. It is also useful to mark off
degree sightings from
mid-companionway by sticking
adhesive tape at suitable points
on guardrails and the cabin top.
To judge how far off the
shoreline you are, stretch out
one arm to full extent with
the thumb sticking up. Sight
past it to any object ashore
through one eye only, then
close that eye and open the
other: the thumb will ‘jump’
a certain distance along the
shore. Visualise this ‘jump’
distance multiplied by nine
and your distance off will be
approximately the same; it is
easier to judge a distance seen
thus at right angles. The trick
assumes that the ratio of width
of eyes to outstretched thumb
is 1:9. Best check up on your
own eyes and thumb.
DISTAnce jUDgIng
50 yards: A person’s eyes
and mouth are clearly
distinguished.
120 yards: A person’s eyes
and mouth become dots
and a dash.
200-300 yards: A person’s
face is distinguishable but not
their features.
400-500 yards: Movement of
legs walking, or arms rowing,
is distinguishable.
600-800 yards: Individual
becomes a vertical dash
1 mile – 1∞⁄∏ miles: Portholes of
large ships and small buoys are
distinguishable.
2 miles: Large navigation buoys
– but not their shape or colour.
If the steering compass is sited
too low down for bearings
of objects to be taken from
it, proceed as follows: take
any length of string or signal
halyard and, holding it taut,
sight past it to the object with
the string also cutting the
centre boss of the compass.
A rough bearing can then
be read.
Legend has it that a blind Polynesian navigator smelled his way between islands and gauged
latitudes by using his hand to feel sea temperature
‘I’ll never forget the sweet, fragrant and lightly spiced smell of St Lucia after my first Atlantic crossing in my Contessa 32,’ recalled Tristan.
Tristan’s book, The Natural
Navigator, is published by
Virgin Books at £14.99
This link leads to the original Yachting Monthly natural navigation article.
