A request came in from a connection in Russia who wants to place a link to my blog on their site. The request is to add symbols to the coordinates as, with the text being so long, the actual position of the tri at each entry is not in fact clear.
Here is my response:
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Hi -
In the navigation software that I use to create the blog charts, the tri's position when the readings were taken would have been exactly where the full-stops would appear at the end of each entry eg:
24 56 14 41 Saturday 18:49.
I am a sailor too and to me the coordinates in numbers are more meaningful than a point or a "teardrop" on a chart.
It's been a battle to get the guys to send me the exact coordinates but once I've explained the reason, the quibbling stopped.
The "teardrop" points that are sometimes used on charts actually cover quite an area and should something happen to the boat and recent, accurate coordinates are not available, the Search and Rescue guys may never find them. Also, when the combination of the coordinates with the date and the time at which it was taken from the GPS is read together with previous readings, it is possible to estimate the rate at which the boat was travelling and the search area can therefore be narrowed.
I will put this explanation on my blog and see how other sailors respond. I know the text does not look as pretty as symbols but in my view it is more meaningful and more accurate and in an emergency, you do not have to first go and figure out the coordinates by guessing the exact point of a symbol on a chart.
Hope this makes sense.
Karin
Hello Tempest
ReplyDeleteAs a sailor and navigator I too find the way your entering the latitude and longitude difficult to work with,its a long space of water your showing and what happens when the go off shore to Brasil,please show the lat & long plus the pin point where they are,if you also add a track line it will help too.
Roy
Walvis Bay to Fortaleza,Brasil is about 3000 miles? given an average speed as shown on this last trip pf about 700 miles and around 120 miles a day sailed,they will take some 25 days to cross the ocean.
ReplyDeleteThey intend taking 300 litres of water,so three litres a day per man,that should be enough but not a lot if they take longer?
Follow that boat
ReplyDeleteThis is cool:
Been trying to combine efforts with the webmaster of Energy Diet to supply the tri's latest coordinates on the web as soon as it became available. Since the guys want to limit SAT SMSs it would be preferable to send the coords to one number only from where it can easily be picked up by others, in whatever format they prefer. Roman has now introduced me to the site:
http://my-road.info/
This seems perfect for recording the position of a boat with a symbol as well as coordinates, recording all details of the track online. Even comments.
There must be similar sites - which one/s do you use?