I remember an axiom from when I studied cultural anthropology in college: A society confronted with pressure to change will change just enough to remain the same. This seems to be true of traditions as well.
Photo courtesy of OCSC Sailing
By CaptaIn Ray
Published: January, 2012
I remember an axiom from when I studied cultural anthropology in college: A society confronted with pressure to change will change just enough to remain the same. This seems to be true of traditions as well. As much as a tradition needs to remain the same—how else can it be a tradition?—it also has to change and adjust to new circumstances, albeit sometimes very slowly. This whole thought process started last week when I realized it was almost time to get the tide and current tables for 2012.
For thousands of years, knowledge of the rise and fall of the tide and ebb and flood of the current has been of vital importance to mariners. Given the nature of my work, this knowledge has an effect on my life almost daily. Traditionally, cruising sailors obtain a copy of the next year’s Tide Tables, Tidal Current Tables and Nautical Almanac toward the end of the current year.
These three volumes hold an honored place on the navigator’s bookshelf. They are filled with numerical data, tables with long columns of numbers representing heights and times of tides, the time, strength, and direction of currents, and an assortment of astronomical data. With these books (and one or two others whose contents don’t change yearly), navigators can safety cross oceans, negotiate the often complex currents of tidal waters, and enter or leave harbors with a safe clearance under their keels. For sailing home waters, there are a variety of pocket sized books that contain only the relevant local information. I always have one of these in a pocket of my sailing jacket.
However, to quote a line from Jimmy Buffett’s "Cheeseburger in Paradise": "Times have changed for sailors these days." Or, in the slightly more modern vernacular, "There’s an app for that."
All of this data formerly available in book form is now available online, and can be accessed by anyone with a laptop, tablet or smart phone. While the navigation station of a cruising sailboat is not yet like the bridge of the starship Enterprise, it can be equipped with some rather sophisticated electronics. A chart plotter will display digital charts. When this is linked to your GPS, your vessel’s position will also be displayed right on the screen. You can scroll across the screen, click on any spot and a data box will open giving you real-time tide and current information for that precise location. Add radar and the position and movement of other vessels, aids to navigation, and the location of land can be integrated onto that same screen. Because instruments are now designed to talk (and listen) to each other, onscreen data boxes can be programmed to give you additional information including the vessel’s course and speed, wind direction and speed, water depth and even water temperature.
Of course, a sailing vessel is an unstable platform at best, and an unsecured laptop could quite easily become a deadly flying object and then destroy itself in a crash landing. There is also the problem of electricity and salt water not mixing, or perhaps mixing all too well! It only takes a drop or two in the wrong place for all of this wondrous technology to be wiped out and rendered useless. Things that can fail will fail—always, it seems, at the most inopportune moment. That’s why one of the hallmarks of safety at sea has always been redundancy.
Perhaps that tidebook in my jacket pocket is still a good idea after all.
Ray Wichmann, is a US SAILING-certified Ocean Passagemaking Instructor, a US SAILING Instructor Trainer, and a member of US SAILING’s National Faculty. He holds a 100-Ton Master’s License, was a charter skipper in Hawai’i for 15 years, and has sailed on both coasts of the United States, in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Greece. He is presently employed as the Master Instructor at OCSC Sailing in the Berkeley Marina.
