Advice - Sailing from Phillidelpha to Cape May

[Dave]

For us dyslectics switching between North up and Course/heading up is problematic. Some fuses may blow.

?noisufnoc of stnemom era ereht naem uoY

OK, we are drifting way off topic here!

ln our ongoing attempt to provide accurate and useful information to our members, I do have to address this ancient myth about Dyslexia and Reading Disabilities. As a permanently certified School Psychologist in the Great State of NY, the myth that dyslexics see things backwards is a myth. It just ain't true and doesn't have the decency to die a quiet death.

Reading disabilities, in which dyslexia is included, is a disorder rooted in phonological processing. As simply as I can state it, folks with reading disables have difficulty distinguishing the individual phonemes in words and learning their association with the written word. Differentiating the sounds and graphic representation of the letters, b, d, p, and q are very difficult for reading disabled. And therein lies the origin of the seeing things backwards myth. If you have questions or think the subject of reading disabilities deserve more attention on SBO, please PM my alter ego or start a thread in the Sails Call Lounge.
So, let's get back to sailing plans, boat projects and other such weighty matters.

Fair Winds,

Dave

Today's boat yoga exercise.

 

[thinwater]

Honestly ... most of the time I don't look at the plotter much. I don't need to, and keeping your eyes outside the cockpit is important too.

A good many of use learned to sail before GPS existed in any practical sense. My first GPS was lon/lat, and that felt like cheating. I went on thousand-mile coastal cruises, including a good bit of ICW/VIP (and staying on-topic--several trips on the Delaware Bay, into Cape May) distance with a compass and binoculars. No problems that a chart plotter would have solved.

I'm not anti-heading-up. I use it in my car all the time, where it is better. But remember, a car is constrained by roads. They don't tack or follow wind shifts. There is not one answer.
Spacial Mental Representation

 

[thinwater]

OK, we are drifting way off topic here!

ln our ongoing attempt to provide accurate and useful information to our members, I do have to address this ancient myth about Dyslexia and Reading Disabilities. As a permanently certified School Psychologist in the Great State of NY, the myth that dyslexics see things backwards is a myth. It just ain't true and doesn't have the decency to die a quiet death.

Reading disabilities, in which dyslexia is included, is a disorder rooted in phonological processing. As simply as I can state it, folks with reading disables have difficulty distinguishing the individual phonemes in words and learning their association with the written word. Differentiating the sounds and graphic representation of the letters, b, d, p, and q are very difficult for reading disabled. And therein lies the origin of the seeing things backwards myth. If you have questions or think the subject of reading disabilities deserve more attention on SBO, please PM my alter ego or start a thread in the Sails Call Lounge.
So, let's get back to sailing plans, boat projects and other such weighty matters.

Fair Winds,

Dave

Today's boat yoga exercise.

View attachment 217865

An article on how disabilities like this relate to chart reading would be interesting. Something to consider. I sail with one person that can steer with the display on heading up, but if forced to deviate from a straight forward channel they have trouble translating between zoom levels and keeping track of soundings and shoal area. A bright person and a good sailor, but charts while driving are a difficult challenge. If the chart is stationary (for example, planning) they can compensate. But when it is all in motion things get lost.

 

[dlochner]

An article on how disabilities like this relate to chart reading would be interesting. Something to consider. I sail with one person that can steer with the display on heading up, but if forced to deviate from a straight forward channel they have trouble translating between zoom levels and keeping track of soundings and shoal area. A bright person and a good sailor, but charts while driving are a difficult challenge. If the chart is stationary (for example, planning) they can compensate. But when it is all in motion things get lost.

Google Scholar to the rescue (search term: spatial orientation and navigation). Here are a couple of articles that might interesting if you can dig through the rarefied language of academia.

One recent finding in dementia studies is the loss of spatial orientation and direction is one of the earliest signs of dementia. The later effects of this deficit result in the wandering often associated with people having dementia. They may know where they want to go, but lack the environmental awareness of how to get there. They have lost their North Star.

My brief reading of the abstract of this article suggests people who use mobile navigation devices (GPS devices in cars) have greater difficulty learning new routes and being geosnatially oriented.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00330124.2018.1479970

Another brief abstract read suggests environmental geometry affects spatial orientation and navigation. This might be an interesting avenue to pursue. The sailing corollary might be differences in seat of the pants navigation by those of use who learned navigation before chart plotters and those who have always had available.

The shape of human navigation: How environmental geometry is used in maintenance of spatial orientation

The role of environmental geometry in maintaining spatial orientation was measured in immersive virtual reality using a spatial updating task (requiri…

www.sciencedirect.com

However, this kind of spatial orientation is not the same as that of a 5 year old trying to learn letter names, shapes, and sounds. The b, d, p, q problem is quite novel to the tyke. For his whole life a pencil was a pencil no matter which direction it was pointed. Suddenly the "b" shape has 4 different names and sounds depending on which way it is pointed, all 4 make variations on the same sound, buh, duh, puh, quh, and 3 have very similar names, bee, dee, pee. If you have trouble discriminating subtle phoneme differences, you'll have trouble reading.