The Excellent Adventure

Last Oct/Nov/Dec, I took the U.S. Sailing Coastal Navigation course. Eight weeks of class, each one on some new impenetrable mystery related to answering the questions “where are we going” and “how can we get there?” Who knew that Navigation was such a rich, textured, ancient art? So much passion, so much money, so much intrigue and mystery, over the years, simply to get your boat across the water and back again.

I’m such a hopeless geek, I fell in love immediately.

Of course, that isn’t the info in the course. The course is simply the basic mechanics; how to interpolate depth of water at a point in tide, how to figure out set and drift of current, what to do when you have no idea where you are, care and feeding of a ship’s compass. Very straightforward, cookbookish stuff, but unlike most mathematical endeavors, it’s complicated by the fact that there is a huge degree of uncertainty built in, and a lot of being a good navigator is realizing the limits of what you can do, and being OK with that.

In that way, it’s a very zen discipline. We can read the tide tables precisely, but we have to be resigned to the fact that tidal predictions are just that, predictions, and they’re as likely as not to be off because of something happening on Planet Earth that the algorithm simply didn’t account for. Read the charts, the books say, but use your eyes, and pay attention to what’s happening around you.

But of course, it being a class, and a certification, there’s an exam. And for an exam, there is no world around you. It’s you, and the paper, and your navigation tools, and a chart. Oh, and the hat, of course. The sailing school gives you a free hat on your birthday, and embroidered in friendly print across the back, is the school motto, “inspire confidence”. Whew. I set the hat down carefully on the corner of the desk, with the motto facing me.

And so it begins. Questions designed to replicate the real sailing world, from within the confines of a classroom. I finally gave up, and used the little model sailing ships they have in the room to illustrate various sailing principles on. I closed my eyes, willed myself to smell salt, and glory be, it all made much more sense than watching the little printed numbers swim across the page. Took my answer sheet downstairs, and although I still need to wait for the charting to be graded by one of the instructors, I did well enough on the rest of the exam that they passed me on the spot.

I now have a shiny new sticker in my logbook that shows I am a Navigator, someone to be trusted with a Portland Plotter and a Local Notice to Mariners. Someone who can be asked the question “where are we?”, and reasonably be expected to come up with an answer to a predetermined degree of confidence.

But this is only the beginning of the mystery. I am reminded of a quote by the great American philosopher Theodor Geisel, who said “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” First thing this morning, to celebrate, I read a chapter from Bowditch, and then ordered myself a copy of “Barefoot Navigator”. I want to know how the ancients made their way across oceans, without any of the fiddly plastic tools and complex charts we use. I want to know what it feels like to brace on the rails to read the sextant. I want to know more.

Tags: Education, Navigation

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