How changing habits of navigation affect us

[thesaltytar]

I agree, it's essentially academic at this point. It is plainly better but my question is more along the lines of... Just because we can, should we?

Obviously commercially the answer is yes. And it makes our lives better so again, yes. And it makes us safer. All good things. But what is the cost? I believe it comes with a price.

The question then is how is technology changing us as we use it?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...8fb_story.html
Washington Post discusses use of GPS and the loss of hippocampal mass and a disconnect from our environment.

Closely related to smartphone use, where studies have shown the ready access to information tends to make us operate with a more superficial level of knowledge, shallow learning if you will, and use of smartphones can make us a little mentally lazy.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/healtht...the-brain/amp/
UNC Health Talk

I think we have all the ability in the world to have our cake and eat it too (odd saying really... Because that's the point of the cake, right?). It comes down to knowing we are in control of our technology and our day to day experience instead of being completely reliant on that technology because we lose something of ourselves in that transaction. By all means use GPS, I just feel that having the ability to not need it is a type of inoculation against the reliance and some of the negative aspects I have read about.

I recognize I'm a bit of a Luddite (I like to think I am an informed Luddite). I'm on a wood gaffer and wear oilskins. I get it. Part of this is that I don't want my experience to be automated and a lot of technology is about automating the user experience. It comes down to why I went to sea, which is to have personal autonomy of my experience and a relationship with my environment and reduce (not eliminate) technical interferences. "Unplug" if you will.

[lo2jones]

Funny story from teaching an offshore class. We were departing San Francisco Bay for three days of sailing offshore. Just past the bridge, we turned off the motor to start sailing, and almost immediately one of the women on board reported the smell of burning plastic. We turned off the battery switches and started investigating while the on watch crew sailed us back into a safe harbor. By 02:00 we were anchored in a safe harbor where I made the call that folks should stop looking for the problem and get some sleep. We had isolated it to the starter area. The next morning, we called vessel assist to tow us back to our base. The student Captain, navigator, and myself were in the cockpit with a chart, which I had placed on the table. The tow boat skipper asked for your coordinates. The captain and navigator scrambled for 10 minutes trying to figure out what power source to use to power-up the chart plotter. I stood silently and watched. After they were done, I told them to watch me. It took me about 20 seconds to find our position, derive the lat and long and delivery them to an imaginary tow boat captain. The school from which I have retired has an Achilles Heal: not instilling a trust in DR navigating or maintaining basic skills.

[contrail]

Originally Posted by wingssail

No, Vestas was equipped with two laptop computers at the nav station and the charts onboard had all the detail, but the atol did not show up when zoomed out.

If I recall correctly, it was a bit more insidious, in that the chart they used was a Vector based chart, the nature of which is to show certain things at only high levels of zoom, rather than a Raster based chart, which is essentially a photograph of a paper chart, and will show everything, even if in very small detail. This actually has relevance to all of us.....you mention the difficulty in locating the reef, yourself, unless you were zoomed in to an impractical degree. Well, there is actually a pretty large rock, not far under the surface of the water in the BVI, between Jost Van Dyke and St. Thomas, that is only shown on a really high level of zoom. Used to be that any charter skipper knew where it was. Now, boats just blithely pass by. And, that is a heavily travelled area! I wonder how many participants on this thread know what a vector chart is, or what a raster chart is, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of each. I wonder how many know which one they are using (clue....most small boat MFD's use vector charts, the ones that mean you have to zoom way in to see everything)?

Another scary thing is that our MFD's usually pick which version of a chart to display, partly based on the zoom level. A plotter that I owned, until recently, had the full complement of Garmin charters for the Caribbean. Most of these were dead accurate for the BVI, other than the eastern part of Gorda Sound, and Anegada, and I knew those areas by heart. So imagine my surprise to find that one level of zoom had the gap between Virgin Gorda and Moskito Island placed perfectly, and another level of zoom located that gap about a mile South, roughly abeam of Gorda Peak, ashore. I would often do that particular bit in the dark, and fortunately, it was in daylight that I discovered the particular zoom level that would have taken me straight onshore (other than that I always used radar, as well). When I alerted Garmin that this potentially lethal chart was part of the packet for the area, I was told that they did not make or select the charts and were not responsible for them, which is technically, but not morally, true.

I find that way too many folks are blind to the pitfalls of technology, and see only the advantages. One of the more prolific posters on this thread trumpets how unlikely it is to experience failure of all the redundant GPS receivers onboard......i suspect he has never been struck by lightning, and I hope his luck holds!
Here is an interesting example of blind faith in technology. My brother was an airline pilot, and when he first was on a 747, he noted that the manual did not include a procedure for failure of all four engines, unlike most manuals. He was brusquely informed that the engines were so reliable that loosing all of them was a statistical impossibility! As an engineer, he questioned that, and a month later, Mount Saint Helen's erupted. You guessed it....a 747 was caught in the ash cloud and lost all four engines. Fortunately, the flight crew was finally able to re-start an engine before they hit the ground, and all ended well. A month later, my brother noted an addition to the flight manual to cover losing all the engines.......moral to all of this is that sometimes, we don't know what we don't know!

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by contrail

...So imagine my surprise to find that one level of zoom had the gap between Virgin Gorda and Moskito Island placed perfectly, and another level of zoom located that gap about a mile South, roughly abeam of Gorda Peak, ashore...

One of the things I do before embarking on a voyage to a new area, and which I recommend to all navigators, is take a look at the charts you have for that area. Look closely. try different zoom levels and look for anomalies.

If you don't like what you see or don't see sufficient detail, look for better charts.

Always look for and obtain the best charts you can get for anywhere you are going to. This is part of doing your homework and being prepared as a navigator.

Often I have made electronic charts from paper charts which I trust. And if nothing else exists, use google earth as a source. There are tools which you can use which make good charts from paper sources or google earth.

But if you take off, totally air head, assuming your chart plotter will guide you without your full involvement, you deserve what you get.

[requiem]

Originally Posted by lo2jones

The captain and navigator scrambled for 10 minutes trying to figure out what power source to use to power-up the chart plotter. I stood silently and watched. After they were done, I told them to watch me. It took me about 20 seconds to find our position, derive the lat and long and delivery them to an imaginary tow boat captain. The school from which I have retired has an Achilles Heal: not instilling a trust in DR navigating or maintaining basic skills.

Hmm... this school didn't require plotting a particular number of non-GPS fixes on the paper, along with maintaining a DR track? What happened to the CoNav class?

Originally Posted by contrail

If I recall correctly, it was a bit more insidious, in that the chart they used was a Vector based chart, the nature of which is to show certain things at only high levels of zoom, rather than a Raster based chart, which is essentially a photograph of a paper chart, and will show everything, even if in very small detail. This actually has relevance to all of us.....you mention the difficulty in locating the reef, yourself, unless you were zoomed in to an impractical degree.

....

So imagine my surprise to find that one level of zoom had the gap between Virgin Gorda and Moskito Island placed perfectly, and another level of zoom located that gap about a mile South, roughly abeam of Gorda Peak, ashore.

It's been sitting in draft for some time, and still needs some heavy editing and re-organizing, but I've tried putting together a short intro to the less-obvious features of ENCs. I can't speak for proprietary forms used by Navionics, etc, but for standard ENCs they can be considered largely similar to paper charts: each ENC, like a paper chart, is created with an intended viewing scale, and includes only those elements considered relevant for that scale. Compare, for example, the representation of a harbour entrance on a very small scale paper chart to that of a large-scale harbour chart.

Looking at the Virgin Gorda case, I think I see what you mention. Just for kicks I placed a number of marks around other prominent features around the islands in the area, and it appears that the 1:250,000 scale NGA chart is improperly georeferenced. (At least, that's what I see here, so I suspect Garmin used the same source.) I'd argue this is a chart error, but I'd also argue that using a 1:250k chart to navigate through that gap is... unwise.

In short, any item of navigational significance that someone saw fit to include on a small-scale raster chart should be similarly displayed on a small-scale vector chart. If something doesn't show up, as in the Vestas case, this is not a vector chart problem, but a cartography problem. It is no different from someone omitting the shoals from a small-scale raster chart of the area.

[RaymondR]

Hi requiem,

"In short, any item of navigational significance that someone saw fit to include on a small-scale raster chart should be similarly displayed on a small-scale vector chart. If something doesn't show up, as in the Vestas case, this is not a vector chart problem, but a cartography problem. It is no different from someone omitting the shoals from a small-scale raster chart of the area."

is a very good point,

And on a decent sized chart plotter you can have both a small scale chart and a large scale chart merely by zooming.

I have been single handing for twenty years most of it using traditional paper charts. In 2016 I replaced my steel boat with a plastic one and installed an MFD at the helm position. Not only has this saved me many, many trips down and up from nav station to the wheel, being able to quickly and conveniently compare what is illustrated on the chart plotter with what I can visually observe has greatly improved my situational awareness from a safe navigation viewpoint.

I have now evolved my techniques of course setting by zooming out to place goto waypoints then zooming in to backtrack along the intended course to check whether there are any obstructions.

Casting my mind back to when I began coastal cruising 35 years ago I recall the period when I navigated using geographical features and dead reckoning and probably covered twice the distances on a day sail to give hazards a wide berth due to the imprecision of coastal navigation. Approaching any coast was often a nerve wracking experience.

I then purchased a gps and plotted positions on a chart and reduced the distances and with good charts alleviated a lot of the stress. Unfortunately I also had a number of very scary experiences due to near misses.

I now have two plotters installed at the helm and dopler radar and I will set one to large scale with course up display and one to small scale with north up display. This provides both a bearing of direction to object of interest and an overall progression of distance made good and distance to go and greatly assists the perceptual focusing often required in navigating waterways.

I have also found the capability to change displayed information to be of considerable value.

One of the problems one encounters is excessive focusing which might cause one to overlook important data. I have found that being able to change one of the displays to show SOG and water depth in 3" high numerals beside the chart display makes it much harder to miss shoaling water depths.

I am still evolving techniques and using them until they become prudent habits and am now so enamored of plotter navigation at the helm that I would probably sell the boat and buy an RV if the satellite systems went, and stayed, down.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by contrail

……

……..When I alerted Garmin that this potentially lethal chart was part of the packet for the area, I was told that they did not make or select the charts and were not responsible for them, which is technically, but not morally, true.

I find that way too many folks are blind to the pitfalls of technology, and see only the advantages. One of the more prolific posters on this thread trumpets how unlikely it is to experience failure of all the redundant GPS receivers onboard......i suspect he has never been struck by lightning, and I hope his luck holds!
H………

A lot of electronic charts contain the errors that are on paper ones. Merely having paper doesn’t exclude errors.


I’m a prolific poster and trumpet the survivability of GNSS

YES. I was hit by lightening , 3 strikes

The mfd went out a Seatalk GNSS receiver went out. The three iPhones where fine , the laptop was fine and the down stairs nav computer was fine ( Android )

Yep lost 2 of the 6 GNSS.

Sailed 3 hours home using one of the iPhones with Navionics.

That’s my point total failure is Very unlikely , the future is all electronics navigation. That’s just the way it will be , no paper.

What we therefore need is to teach people the weaknesses of these systems and to ensure they retain spatial awareness and not surrender completely to electronic aids

If the whole GNSS system fails. My concern about exact location will be the least of worries , ( I’m a student of old nav techniques anyway. I can go longitude by lunar distance !! ) the sun always sets in the west and a finger based pelorus will do nicely. !

Paper is dead folks.

[valhalla360]

Reminds me of when Fuel Injection took over from Carburetor. Gear heads were worried because they knew how to clean and rebuild a carb and those skills would be lost and people will be left stranded on the side of the road.

Or we have the people who "claim" they won't fly trans-oceanic flights unless the plane has 4 engines because it provides more redundancy in the case of an engine failure

In reality, modern Fuel Injected cars and twin engine long haul planes are far more reliable than 40-50yr old comparables.

So before we panic, GPS has been relatively cheap and available for 30+ years with electronic chart plotting cheap and available for 15-20yrs. It's the rare cruising boat that doesn't at least have the capability today. So if we are really losing the capability and it's creating a risk, it should be showing up statistically.

Has there been a statistical increase in navigational related accidents?

Before you point out anecdotes of one off accidents, there were accidents in the days before GPS. I'm asking if there is a statistical pattern that can be demonstrated. Also, keep in mind there are far more cruisers out there today, so it needs to be framed in a "per cruiser" format rather than total number of accidents.

I strongly suspect the answer is, navigation has never been safer on the whole.

This isn't to say, people shouldn't be reminded to look out the window occasionally but there's no reason for panic if people use electronic chart plotting as their primary navigational tool.

[Bowdrie]

For many years after the old Sat-Nav system shut down I kept the Magnavox unit on board.
With its compass and speed inputs it would still "roll off the numbers" and provide a "running DR" from a known position that I could manually input from what a GPS told me.
Plotting on the chart would provide a known set-and-drift and that could also be manually entered to update the DR.
I rather liked it at the time.
As an aside, (and being an aficionado of WWII Naval actions,) it is quite amazing that more vessels were not lost by running aground in the thousands of islands/reefs/atolls in the Pacific.
Many times they were using charts from the 1800s and running around at night at high speeds, just plotting bearings from land masses by moonlight, or by radar, (which showed how far off much of the chart data was).
Although that was the single greatest cause of losses in PT boats.

[contrail]

"Looking at the Virgin Gorda case, I think I see what you mention. Just for kicks I placed a number of marks around other prominent features around the islands in the area, and it appears that the 1:250,000 scale NGA chart is improperly georeferenced. (At least, that's what I see here, so I suspect Garmin used the same source.) I'd argue this is a chart error, but I'd also argue that using a 1:250k chart to navigate through that gap is... unwise."







I agree that it is unwise....of course it is! Except, most modern chartplotters choose which charts, in their voluminous libraries, they use. And, inexplicably, my Garmin decided this chart was the one to use, instead of a harbor chart, or something similar, when I was zoomed right in! It used the same chart in a few other areas, too. I had found that my MFD had much more memory than I had realized, and had allowed it to download, from a Garmin chart CD, several more charts to expand my Caribbean coverage. And the MFD then preferred this newly added chart!


Only by carefully going through the various charts did I locate the error, or rather, the group of charts in which the error existed, perhaps as you did. And I corrected the situation by deleting every chart that was greater than 1:100,000, after which everything was fine.



It was not my choice to use that chart, nor would it have been anyone else's, and I imagine there were quite a few "anyone else's" out there. And likely other such charts. My point was that blindly following technology, without a good use of positional awareness (in my case, radar and eyeball), is foolishness.


I have another story about a well known and popular radar, whose software would cause it to gradually erase nearby targets (like islands!) in automatic mode. I ran into the company president, at a boat show, and he immediately put me in touch with his "radar guy". The expert's first answer was, "well, of course you should know better than to use radar when it is dark or foggy and you cannot see things with your eyes...!" After we got past that, he acknowledged that the fault I had found was known to them, but that they were no longer supporting that unit so neither a fix, nor notification to the users, was in the works.


Be careful, out there.

[AKA-None]

Originally Posted by requiem

You mean you don't just type the destination marina / restaurant into the Navionics search box, click "Boat to" and hand the wheel over to Otto so you can start mixing drinks? How boooring...

Pretty certain I’ve seen lots of these out and about

[requiem]

Originally Posted by contrail

And, inexplicably, my Garmin decided this chart was the one to use, instead of a harbor chart, or something similar, when I was zoomed right in! It used the same chart in a few other areas, too. I had found that my MFD had much more memory than I had realized, and had allowed it to download, from a Garmin chart CD, several more charts to expand my Caribbean coverage. And the MFD then preferred this newly added chart!

That is quite strange! There are, so far as I'm aware, few if any standards for plotter design. I believe the RYA has made some recommendations in this area, but it's an area that could likely benefit from having specific and testable requirements.

For example, an ECDIS system is required to display overscale warnings when someone zooms too far. This doesn't prevent it from happening, but at least provides warning that a more detailed chart either isn't present or isn't being displayed.

Another issue isn't just coastlines being smoothed or less precise at smaller scales, but that some features may be presented differently. The IHO has a nice publication discussing chart scaling issues that's worth a quick read. One of the examples from that is how a reef might be presented as a point feature on a small-scale chart, vs an area feature on a more detailed chart. This is particularly vulnerable to over-zooming, as obviously a single point location will not change in size as you zoom.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Reminds me of when Fuel Injection took over from Carburetor. Gear heads were worried because they knew how to clean and rebuild a carb and those skills would be lost and people will be left stranded on the side of the road.

Or we have the people who "claim" they won't fly trans-oceanic flights unless the plane has 4 engines because it provides more redundancy in the case of an engine failure

In reality, modern Fuel Injected cars and twin engine long haul planes are far more reliable than 40-50yr old comparables.

So before we panic, GPS has been relatively cheap and available for 30+ years with electronic chart plotting cheap and available for 15-20yrs. It's the rare cruising boat that doesn't at least have the capability today. So if we are really losing the capability and it's creating a risk, it should be showing up statistically.

Has there been a statistical increase in navigational related accidents?

Before you point out anecdotes of one off accidents, there were accidents in the days before GPS. I'm asking if there is a statistical pattern that can be demonstrated. Also, keep in mind there are far more cruisers out there today, so it needs to be framed in a "per cruiser" format rather than total number of accidents.

I strongly suspect the answer is, navigation has never been safer on the whole.

This isn't to say, people shouldn't be reminded to look out the window occasionally but there's no reason for panic if people use electronic chart plotting as their primary navigational tool.

I certainly agree , that suggesting you need sextant and paper backup is howling at the moon

[flightlead404]

Personally I straddle the line. Grew up with scouting and orienteering using Ordnance Survey maps and a little brass compass, cut more teeth in airplanes with paper maps and approach plates and steam gauges, built myself an all glass multi-panel IFR system with 3 axis auto pilot and don't carry paper at all any more. In the boat I like large scale paper maps just for laying them out and doing high level planning, and use multiple GPS and plotters but am constantly eyes out of the cockpit taking bearings on observable and charted objects like towers, points of land etc and use hand bearing, binnacle and binocular mounted compasses.

Using a GPS does not require giving up the old ways, and should not.

If you want to watch something really interesting and saddening about GPS/computer over reliance and distraction look for Children of The Magenta Line on youtube. An older but still on point discussion by American Airlines chief pilot about the crash where AA's flight crew flew a perfectly good airliner into the top of a mountain because they were messing with the computer.

[flightlead404]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

...
Or we have the people who "claim" they won't fly trans-oceanic flights unless the plane has 4 engines because it provides more redundancy in the case of an engine failure...

My father was chief engineer on the GE 90 and was part of the team that got ETOPS approved and the various rule making bodies to agree on homologation.

You would not believe how many people at senior rule making levels don't understand simple math.

FWIW I was at the Peebles test facility for the bird ingestion tests on the GE90. Amazing the havoc that ensures when you fire a frozen bag lady out of a cannon into a 110,000lb static thrust engine at 110%!