It is a truism in life that the more skilled you become at something the simpler the kit you require. I remember as a child a "Master Carpenter" was due to turn up at a house my family was rebuilding. I was a child at the time and I expected some kind of woodworking hero to turn up, armed with an array of fancy and exotic tools. Instead an old man turned up with a dodgy looking leather bag. Inside this bag were just a few tools - a gnarly looking handsaw, a chisel, a hammer, a self turning screwdriver, a plane and pencil. That was all he needed. I was confused at first but I watched this auld bugger work his way round the building, look a things, swear and demand a cup of tea.
His first job was to fit an angled support that joined two roof beams together. He needed to make a complex shape consisting of an asymmetrical 'V' at one end and a kind of pointed romboid at the other. He took a piece of 4x2, looked at the joint, swore, propped the wood on his knee and made a cut with his gnarly handsaw. Similarly he looked at the other end and repeated this miraculous act. It fitted like a glove - first time, no tape measure, no angle mitre, no electricity, not even the pencil (which he kept behind his ear). He spent the entire day repeating this miracle work, creating the perfect from nothing. At the end of the day he thanked us for at least being interesting and left.
I have come across this exact type of thing so many times and each time I re-learn a lesson, simply put: you cannot buy skill. So, it is with this thought in mind I started looking at the way I sail. When I sailed to Norway, across the North Sea, a couple of years ago we counted something like 9 GPS receivers on the boat. There were 4 mobile phones, a radio fitted GPS, a laptop GPS, an AIS GPS, an EPIRB and finally a chartplotter one. The chartplotter knew where we were, knew where we were planning to go and told us if we were off track. We had a depth sounder, a radar and some of us had Navionics installed on our mobiles. Basically, we knew where we were!
However it is possible to sail without all that hardware and if you find yourself in the company of a salty old sea dog, you will probably find that he does not really care for it all. The advent of GPS is a relatively recent addition to the toolkit but it should by no means be the only thing you rely on. If you are coastal sailing then all you need is charts and a compass. If you are blue water sailing then replace the compass with a sextant. Yes, I know I am over simplifying things but if you boil it all down to its essence then I think you will be hard pressed to argue with me - after all we sailed all over the globe in the past and we did not even have the benefits of a chart.
I am reminded of an old TV sketch where a Walter Raleigh type character promises to sail off and find a new continent, the head minister hands him a scroll of paper, announcing "This is the latest from our best cartographers!", our hero replies "Uhm, it's blank!", "Yes", the minister replies, "they were wondering if you could fill it in as you go along..."
So, periodically I switch things off and return to basics, it passes the time and sharpens the brain somewhat. You actually have to take an interest in coastal objects and understand them, you actually have to think about your set and drift. The occulting nature of a light takes on new significance. I think the result is a more rewarding journey.
I do sail with the electronics on most of the time, if I am honest, but I do appreciate what it is doing more and I feel somewhat reassured that if it all goes horribly wrong I can go back to first principles - and there is the reward, it is even more enjoyable for having that bit of knowledge.
