Posts by Zenubi 31 posts • joined 17 Jun 2021
Back in the days of multimedia I managed to name and send a file ready for a CD pressing as "company name porno". I ought to have called it promo.
Fortunately the nice people at the CD plant called me before making 1000 copies.
This typo was missed by a few other people including the client. What was I thinking?
I did a lot of offshore / passage sailing (42ft sloop) back in the 80's. That's before GPS. We did have a stupidly expensive sat-nav but you had to look up tables to see a sats azimuth / position to use it - we also found we had to heave to so it basically never got used.
We used dead reckoning and an occasional sextant fix but on a passage and out of shipping lanes this got sloppy quickly. That said we never actually missed our targets which were quite big like Barbados or Senegal.
Inshore and out of Europe where Decca was in use we used RDF using aero beacons. This could be very accurate but I think these are gone now. We were also sensibly not above asking passing ships for a position check. Sometimes inshore ships / fishing boats would call us (VHF) with helpful info like "don't worry - you are still 20 nms from the rocks"
I watch YouTube cruising sailor vids and see how easy it is now. No idea how many of them would cope without GPS.
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