Taken literally that doesn’t really make sense.
This is another case of thinking at the margin. In reality the point of diminishing returns is going be hit and it’s not going to make sense to continue to make additional efforts to obtain increasingly less useful information.
Unless it is not. Even if 99% of the time it is redundant. Navigation, especially in piloting waters is a 100% game.
This does not mean that you are running around the bridge taking 2 minute fixes, it means the picture in the radar, and picture out the window agree with the position on the E-chart.
This part I agree with. Need to watch for mismatches between the primary methods (if available).
But if taken literally the advice is to continue to run around doing whatever rather than watch forward.
I think this is more then just a quibble because the cost in time and effort of obtaining information is key. That’s why using the ECDIS is an improvement. It allows more time seeking out mismatches and less time collecting and processing information.
Sounds great. Did you do it in a single go, or over a course of years?
agree - but if you have to have the skill and practice to check the ECDIS with plotting skills when or if there are mismatches. You will only have that skill to do these checks quickly, and accurately if you use them routinely.
It always has been part of a navigators judgement to evaluate the situations and priorities what needs to be done. ECDIS does not change that, at least IMO. If there is too much demand for multiple tasks, it is probably time to get some more help on the bridge.
The skill accomplishes two goals. The most obvious one is that if you use it, you have backup when the GPS fails. However, learning and maintaining the skill I’ll call “spacial recognition” is also enhanced by using paper charts. It’s not so much things like fine motor skills of operating a divider as repeatedly reinforcing the knowledge of things like latitude is one thing, longitude another, and those lines work differently on a sphere.
And I have to say, as an aside to the original post, Shackleton’s challenge would have been enhanced by the practice of Native Americans who used to drop a kid off on a wooded island with a hatchet and have them make a canoe to get back home.
When I was a QM in the Coast Guard back in the LORAN days sometimes there was an error in the track-line from one chart to the next. So when the chart was changed you’d be off track, but we’d just correct by changing course and getting “back on track”.
That changed when the GPS receivers starting showing the “Highway” display with the cross-track error. Then when the track-line on the paper chart was in error the mates would just follow the GPS and ignore the track-line on the chart.
That’s when we actually started shifted away from plotting from paper, it was not when ECDIS started being used.
After 4 years as a Radarman in the Navy in the early 70’s, on WW2 destroyers without NDTS, all solutions were manual. At the end of the first cruise, I could do collision avoidance on the scope plotting head - didn’t need to pull out maneuvering board/plotting sheet. . . Man, the Radar Observer cert for USCG license was E A S Y.
Eh track control has it, gotta figure how how to work the coffee maker!
This is more to the point of the thread. Wouldn’t it make sense to advise the NMC to phase out paper chart questions, and academies phase out paper chart training, and instead teach traditional methods only as they can be applied to a plotter? All testing would be done on a simulated plotter
How much of the navigational landscape is based on paper charts? Visual navaids are redundant without paper charts. Lighthouses are ignored by many modern navigators, especially at night. The captain tells the mate, “See that? That’s Blah-Blah Light!” And the mate says, “Uh-huh” and stares at the plotter.
Many modern navigators ignore navaids, and focus on the plotter. So why bother with the taxpayer expense?
Celestial navigation doesn’t rely on paper charts per se but is much less useful without them. So C-Nav can be dumped right away. Unless the desire is to have actual navigators aboard ship rather than ECDIS-operators, which are what many modern navigators actually are.
The difference is this: in the very unlikely event of an ECDIS system going down for a minute or two, a true navigator, with navaids and compasses, would be able to keep the boat oriented, and make a turn, until the next plotter was online. They would do this would perfect confidence in their ability to pilot by eye for the short interim. Meaning, they would keep focus.
Whereas an ECDIS-operator in those few minutes would be a hot mess of confusion, or a cluelessly-cool accident waiting to happen. Doesn’t matter what they learned three years ago in class about piloting. Unless you practice piloting, skill is quickly lost.
We can say that in the case of the ECDIS-operator, the captain will be on the bridge in seconds, to save the situation with their long years of experience. But that will come to an end when most captains themselves are ECDIS-operators and not true navigators.
In the end it comes down strictly to the degree of professional skill the shipowner wants in their wheelhouse. Most shipowners will go with the cheapest option available.
Started in Greenville Miss. on Feb. 12th - 1980 - - SUPPOSED to have started 10th, but SNOW in MS made it too slick to debark from Greenville landing.
When we got to Natchez we saw Mississippi Queen - - USMM Academy person told us about coming TALL SHIPS in Boston - - Boston was not on our itenerary. By the time we got to Brunswick, GA, we had lost so many days due to bad weather, we knew we’d never get there on our own. Made arrangements to take us and canoe aboare towboat and oil barge to Philadelphia - - that company arranged transport on an IOT tug (Challenger) to Boston - - got there for Tall Ships - - decided to stay there a year and save funds for second half ot trip.
May 1981 departed Boston - ran into unexpected wind storm just out of Harbor - - USCG told us to go no further - - waited 2 wks - - still bad weather - - then - - friend from Boston Museum of Trans. put canoe on top of his '68 Volvo station wagon and took us to NEWBURGH and Hudson
Whole trip by water was 5 1/2 months. We stayed a year in Boston. I decided to get my licenses, returned to Boston (and Chicago, where we had also worked on boats) and work toward them.
Rest is history - - following a JOB
This is the bird’s-eye-view vs wheelhouse view conversion problem, it takes a bit to switch.
But I don’t see why it’s not understood that’s how it should be done.
To use a driving analogy, if someone moves to a strange city and gets a new job it makes sense they’d use the GPS on the first few days as an aid to get to work. But if they are still depending on the GPS a few months or years later something is wrong.
For example going up Grenville Channel doesn’t it occur to them that in good weather it can more easily be done visually?
I will have to keep my paper chart with my sextant. Paper gives you a bunch of information but correcting it to keep current is work
What traditional methods do you believe can’t be applied to a plotter?
It’s true that many plotter users are unfamiliar with how to draw bearing lines and radar arcs on a plotter but that isn’t the equipments fault.
That’s not the issue. The issue is, in a world where paper charts are fast disappearing, why are we testing using paper charts?
If, as you say, few are being taught how to use traditional methods on a plotter, then why should plotting of any kind be taught, any more than rowing should be taught to a lifeboatman-trainee in a world without oared lifeboats?
We teach our trainees to navigate through through Plumper Sound/Navy Channel/Trincomali Channel/Porlier Pass strictly by visual navigation, during the day. Long, twisty channels with rocks. Lots of navaids. Lots of current and traffic. They do this on a training boat. They have to figure out the real-life collision avoidance situation with large vessels, small boats, and logs, strictly by eye, chart, compass, and Colregs. It’s frightening for them at first. After several days of similar training it becomes second nature. (There are a few who never catch on.)
When they go through a similar tight places on a freighter, muscle-memory will hopefully drive them to look through the windows, rather than burying their faces in the plotter. When they maneuver on larger targets with ARPA, muscle-memory drives them to scan for SUPs, kayaks, and logs the radar will not detect.
All of which is true. But in tight channels and close-quarters situations I personally don’t want the OOW dealing with repairs. If the boat is threading Seymour or Snow Pass with opposing traffic, and some piece of navigational equipment goes out the OOW has only one real option: navigate without it. Fixing it might take only five minutes but there is no time for hunting fuses.The OOW can call the captain to suss the repair out, or vice-versa. I want the OOW capable and confident of their piloting in those critical moments, not distracted and flailing, and that takes training and practice.
My personal opinion.
The source of positioning data (GPS or terrestrial ) and the method used to plot that data (paper or ECDIS) are two separate things.
All ECDIS systems are equipped with the function of entering positions manually. The so called operational fix is the most common solution. Navigator should used the “old fashion” navigational positioning with radar lines, bearings , depth lines, estimated or dead reckoning position and enter same into ECDIS system.
Plotting on paper charts on a test is related in the same way renewing the radar certificate every 5 years is to ARPA, took a while for that to go away.
I had to show proficiency plotting bearing and ranges on ECIDS to get the ECDIS certificate. Mariners using using other ECN equipment could be required the same thing. If not for the CG than for the company.
Although I am an engineer in my earlier days I sailed on relatively small vessels from Maine to South America as a mate and eventually got a small tonnage captain’s license. The captains then used paper charts and when available Loran. When GPS became available we used it but just to verify our plot. I was in favor of using GPS and Loran as a primary source but one captain explained that if we did so we were one diode away from not knowing where we were, made sense.
There’s significantly more redundancy in GNSS systems now than they’re used to be and they’re much more affordable. It’s now rare for a vessel to have less than two complete gps systems onboard and only having two is starting to be rare.
