Thanks for the clarification..... the fact is, though, she's at sea... circumnavigating the globe.. so this argument is meaningless.
Laura Dekker avoids pirates.....
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Correct there, Ross. That seemed to be her strategy. Most folks thought she would head for Sri Lanka, then convoy up with other cruisers to hang close to the Omani coast... a strategy mentioned in Sail and/or Cruising World magazine. However, a few days after her departure from Darwin, the blog and gps route locator went offline and she went "off the radar" so to speak.... and so now we know she chose to take the 6000 nm passage across the Indian Ocean to stay well away from the dangerous areas. Quite an effort that deserves praise, no matter what opinions people have about her .
I resurrected this subject up to wrap up the speculation we raised a month or so back about what her options were and what the best strategy for a single hander may be. That's it! I don't think this is "war room" material.... I think it's a relevent subject for all of us who may someday want to venture offshore, alone or with crew, old or young, male or female, right wing or left wing or middle of the road, sectarian or non-sectarian, parent or childless, uptight or mellow, overwieght or anorexic, blonde or brunette, racer or cruiser or daysailor,
There is a story told about a man who called his friend and the friend's young son answered the phone. Can I speak to your dad? He is with the police. why is he with the police? they are waiting for the helicopter. What is the helicopter for? they're looking for somebody. Who? Me. Kids learn to hide early in life.
I wasnt arguing, i was just pointing out, she never did deliveries between the Netherlands, and the UK.
I dont really have an opinion of her sailing round the world alone. I know she is a bit of an odd ball, whether her parents made her that way, or its natural, i dont know, i know she is a loner, dosent seem to have any friends, seems to love the lime light, i say that when she was refused permission for her trip round the world by social services, she ran away, and turned up in the dutch east indies. My main opinion of anyone sailing round the world, is once you have done it what else do you have to do, what does the huntsman do, when the king of the foxes is dead.
A guy sailed with me on a boat i had down Florida years ago, and he talked away about how he was going to sail round the world, he could sail a boat, absolutely no doubts about that, he was very good, but he knew nothing about boats, could do nothing, knew nothing about engines, or electronics, and wasnt really interested, spent twenty minuets arguing with me about the radio, because i told him, that radio was an mf/hf set, and he was transmitting in kilo hertz, and not mega hertz. He argued with me for twenty mins, until i got the book and showed him, the radio didnt do mega hertz. He decided to service the toilet, (that was before i knew he couldnt do anything) the toilet never worked again. I couldnt figure out what he did to it, two service kits later, it still didnt work, it worked perfect before he decided to fix it. When i told him, i was going to re set the tappets on the engine, he didnt even know what tappets were, let alone re set them, he could do nothing, but he had this idea, that people would throw sponsorship at him, to buy a boat, and sail it round the world. I didnt want to burst his bubble, but their was no chance that was ever going to happen. Even if he had met some eccentric millionaire who sponsored him, he wouldnt have gotten far, a few thousand miles, until his auto pilot packed up, or the batteries went, or the wind generator broke off, or the engine blew a gasket, or the electrics short circuited. That would have been him, game over.
I have said before on these forums, problem is today, lots of people, are out at sea, where they shouldnt be, because they can pay a few hundred for a gps, and think they can go anywhere. In my opinion, if you cant navigate by sextant, you shouldnt be out of sight of land, same goes for everything you have on that boat, if you cant fix every problem that crops up, then you should be near enough to the coast, so you can go in and get it fixed. I know a few sailors, that can fault find, and repair a broken radio, i know lots that can strip and re build the engine in their boat, I know lots, who when their GPS packs up, they can get their tables, and the sextant out, but for the majority, when the electricity goes off, its abandon ship time.
Sorry Big Al, but in my opinion, this is the most ignorant statement made on these boards in a long time.
By your standard no one should be allowed to leave the docks. Even the navies of the world as well as most merchant carriers no longer teach sextant navigation or even carry one aboard, just in case the navigator knew how and had the proper books, as I am sure you would not approve of his use of a calculator or nav computer. Kind of like morse code on boats. The world, much to your chagrin has moved forward.
You can be the best mechanic in the world, but with out spare parts or a machine shop on board, you are dead in the water.
Many of us have sailed thousands of miles (many just dead reckoning or counting the hours and estimating the details) in spite of our shortcomings, failures of equipment, spirit and thoughts....and with no long term affects other than the desire to go back and do it all again,
despite people like you who would legislate to stop us.
Mostly wrong, you cant get a class two merchant marine certificate, if you cant work a sextant. As for the countries that grant them without you being able to work a sextant, they are not on the international sea fairer register, in other words, pass your certificate in Vietnam, and its not valid for any other country, pass it in pakistan, and you can sail on any countries ships.
You may never have to use it, but, what would happen if you lost your GPS. Their is not that much that can go wrong with a well maintained engine, that cant be fixed while at sea. Sure you can have the big end sieze, and a con rod can burst a hole in the crankshaft, but that wont happen to a well maintained engine, it happens when people dont bother changing the oil or the filter. Most of the damage done to engines, is done by the ignorance of the people that own them. But if you cant do the routine maintenance to an engine on a long passage, then either dont use the engine, or dont go.
I was never fond of morse code, but i do know enough about radio, to know, that morse was the way to communicate over the greatest distances. Today its redundant, due to the capability of satelite phones. I did a GMDSS general operators certificate, and a ham radio general certificate, and you can still use a radio to talk over thousands of miles, so why do people take iridium phones, because they dont have the certificates for mf/hf radio, which means, they cant download weather software on their computer, and hook it up to the radio to update it every day, (well they can, but no point buying a radio you cant transmitt on. The cant call for weather forcasts, all they can do is phone a friend.
Dead reckoning is not the easiest thing on a long passage in a sail boat. For a ship crossing the atlantic, from europe to the usa, they often did it without being able to take a sight for the whole five day passage, but for them, at the speed they were going, dead reckoning was easy. In a sail boat, your set and drift, can be as much as your headway, and for a thousand mile passage, if you dont know your set and drift, you could find yourself at the end of your passage, being a thousand miles from your destination.
I have seen it, with people who sailed in my boat, before we left, they knew everything about everything, One guy who sailed on my boat, (in the ocean) had an Royal Yachting Asscosiation offshore certificate, and wanted to do the ocean certificate,which meant a few ocean passages, learn to navigate by sextant, and sit an exam. He wanted to use my sextant, so i let him, first angle he took of the sun, you could look at the sun,and know it wasnt at eighty degrees, you could estimate it at about forty, but he had eight, discovered the mirror was out of o position, so anyway, he gets that fiixed, takes the angle, and i take one to varify, then ask him if he has done all the corrections "what corrections" anyway, i said to him, a while later, have you done your calculations, he said "no, i have to read the book first" he didnt even know the maths involved in it, he thought, get the angle, look at the book and their is your answer, he gave up when i explained to him, when i explained to him, you need to know what sin over cos equals, because he didnt evnen know what sin and cos were.
Thats the way a lot of people are, they think they can do anything, until they have to do it. Then they find out, just because someone else can do it, dosent mean to say you can do it.
Read voyage of the madmen, that gives you a very good insight into things at sea, ok it a by gone age, it was in the sixties, but the sea is still the same, and people are still the same, all we have now, is a few electronic gadgests to make things easier.
That is probably very true. I have been on ships where the sextant was kept in the captains cabin, and it was never seen on the bridge, it was just carried, because the law said it had to be carried, bit like a log line, we carried one of those too, for legal reasons, but I never in all my time at sea, saw anyone use a log line.
For the coast guard though, they are a coastal organisation, they patrol the us coast, and probably even back in the day of no GPS, they probably didnt use sextants, probably used decca, and before that, probably just their compass, they dont go too far out, they patrol the same areas, and they get to know exactly where they are, the new york coast guard, is not going to patrol down to florida and back, they just patrol a section of new york coastline. I know they may go out a few hundred miles, but only for operational requirements, their main concern, is the coast.
Well i dont know how far offshore, their buoy tenders were, but for placing a bouy when you can see the shore, all you need is a compass bearing. Take it on two points of land, a third bearing, confirms, your first two. Due to the continental shelf, i cant see them placing bouys, in such deep waters, that then would need a sextant to do it, the atlantic, is close to thirty thousand feet deep at its deepest point, just off purto rico, the rest of it averages twelve thousand feet, i cant see anyone laying buoys in that. Twelve thousand feet, two miles of cable, and a bouy attached, no way. Need to be some size of bouy to support two miles of cable, or to support over four miles of cable off puerto rico.
Many years ago, in the sixties, my uncle, had a heart attack at sea. His company thought so much of him, that they didnt pay him off, they sent him home (on full pay) to recupirate, because they wanted him back. while he was home, a friend asked him to go on his fishing boat, to take a run, from the island to the main land, to sell their catch, my uncle went. It was a small boat, forty feet in lenghth. Eight men went, most had to sell catch, the boat was used to tranport the catch of all these eight men,along with them went a twelve year old boy, the son of one of them, who just went for the ride. They sold their catch, in Oban, (scotland) The boat never got back to the island of barra, it sank somewhere in the minch, no one knows how, or why, but they say, that day their was a squal, and they believe the boat just broke up. Everyone went down with the boat, the young kid, was washed up on shore, (the only one) they had tied some fish boxes together, and tied him to them, in the hope he would survive, he washed up on the beach dead. They didnt have a radio, or a liferaft, they just had their boat, which to this day, no one knows what happend to it. My father who had been at sea through the war was really disturbed by it, as he just couldnt understand the loss of that boat. He never got over it, even when i got old enough to get a small boat, he stood on the beach, and shouted to me and my friend, "how is it, does it leak" but he never came out in it, too afraid, that something, was there to take him.
Al....... sorry, there's no argument between us... I meant the argument about whether she should go sailing alone around the world or not.... which was an issue before you started participating in this thread.
Uhm, Al, the CG (over here) is a National organization, not state-by-state. May be different on your side of The Pond.
And when "they don't go out too far" they're not doing their job. And when they did go out of sight of land, they didn't "get to know exactly where they" were by simply looking at the water, 'cuz once you're out of sight of land, all the water looks the same!
Before GPS or Loran or Decca, it seems that they must have had some navigational training to be able to get back.Hey! what about the pirates?
Now boyz, you're not talking about either how wonderful Laura is or pirates. If I had done that . . .
Now boyz, you're not talking about either how wonderful Laura is or pirates. If I had done that . . .
Yes, i think if you can do it, and you have the time, go for it, its still a great thing to claim to have done. I would love to do it myself.Now boyz, you're not talking about either how wonderful Laura is or pirates. If I had done that . . .
Their was a British woman, sailed round the uk, unlike most other sailors, she was quadraplegic, but she circum navigated the UK, she had a support team of about fifty, and went into port every night, but for a few hours, she did control the boat, with another few boats around her, think she steered it with her mouth. Any problem can be solved, if you chuck enough money, or enough people at it, but its not exactly like Robin Knox Johnstone, sailing round the world.
I live in Venezuela, a pirate country...! beware of those small fishing speed wooden boat...! no to anchore solo in a inhabited area but the government inparques presence or in a marina...!
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