wretched contingencies of GPS failure and the far more likely
errors spinning off as we punch the wrong buttons. The chart
plotter gets rid of a good deal of the user-error factor, yet still the
wild cards are dealt and boats pile up on mid-ocean reefs the size
of the Isle of Wight.
A short while back, a pal handed me a life-sized photograph
of an expensive plotter screen showing the approaches to Figuera
de Foz, a Portuguese harbour on the main road from Gibraltar
to the English Channel. His track function had been activated
and the image indicated clearly where his yacht had actually
been as she cruised in. It had been a lovely day and he, being a
seat-of-the-pants sort of sailor, had sensibly set the electronics
aside and favoured the evidence of his own eyes. Snugly
alongside the visitors’ berth, he was enjoying his ritual gin and
tonic when he noticed that the recorded snail trail on his plotter
screen bore no resemblance to the actual headings he must have
followed in order to arrive in one piece.
Figuera de Foz is a river running at right-angles to a sandy
shoreline. The marina is half a mile inside, and the town stands
on rising ground to the north. The plotter had tracked him clean
across the beach 200 yards north of the entrance. It then
recorded the unusual feat of sailing through a car park and past
a famous watering hole before finally coming to rest in the
cathedral. He knew he wasn’t at the altar because nobody in a
surplice had slipped him a wafer, but he’d photographed the
evidence to make sure it wasn’t some special effect of Bombay
Sapphire not advertised on the label.
Three possibilities presented themselves. The first was that the
electronic chart was rubbish. Coming as it did from a well-known
international cartographer, this seemed unlikely. The second
suggested that the software in the plotter, also from a respected
manufacturer, was in grave error. The third implied that the
electronic chart suffered a datum shift by being laid down
on a different horizontal datum to the WGS84 version
favoured by GPS. This could have been dealt with,
but the experts in the cartography office or, perhaps,
the plotter factory hadn’t noticed.
Whatever the cause, the result was the same. It
didn’t matter a hoot on a sunny day, but if my
chum had been relying on the plotter one foggy
night, he’d have lost his ship. Dangers live in
the real world, not on a screen, which
brings me back to my shipmates
aboard the schooner.
As our season ran on, an
unwelcome rival appeared on
our friendly wooden dock. His
vessel was an ugly, slab-sided bermudan ketch designed for
maximum ‘people capacity’ with zero concession to appearance or
sailing performance. The boat was bad enough, but the skipper
was more like a Looney Tunes cartoon character than a man of the
sea. The only marketing strategy we schoonermen employed was a
tatty sign outlining the delights that awaited and the salty vessel
herself offering a grand day out. ‘Pay at the gangway, Folks. Cash
only. Lunch included.’
The newcomer had moved with the times. He set up a brash
kiosk with a glitzy girl selling tickets. The flashy signs promised
visions of the future: ‘Sail the ocean in safety with satellite
navigation’. As for him, rather than the modest tarry smocks and
bare feet favoured on the schooner, our hero sported a store-
bought physique, a carefully nurtured five-day stubble and a tan so
perfect he must have found it lying around on a sun couch, all
rounded off with a gold neck chain. Worst than this, while our
own skipper rattled up to the dock for his bacon roll in a rusty
Chevvy pickup, the opposition cruised along the street in a
brand-new Shelby Mustang whose cringeworthy bumper stickers
announced him to be a ‘Charter Skipper’. His general act was
agreed by all hands to be an insult to The American Way of Life.
For several weeks, our adversary motored around the sound
with a scrap of mizzen hoisted for the look of it, picking up more
of our business than we’d have liked, then strutting his stuff in
the bars of an evening. As our fortunes declined we searched in
vain for a way to turn the tables, but in the end it was his own
refusal to look out of window for piloting that led to his
downfall. One evening, we were easing sheets to turn homewards
singing our song when we noticed his yacht perched on a
well-known half-tide boulder just outside the fairway. The
water was ebbing away and she was already showing
six inches of antifouling while our rival bootlessly
gunned his engine astern. As we swept by, our cook
left the washing up, forgot the whale burgers,
leaned out of his porthole and waved.
“How would you like your ketch, Mister,”
he called out. “Straight up, or on the rocks?”
The skipper gave him a hard time for
being in bad taste, but the customers and
the rest of us lapped it up.
I recalled the fate of our favourite
charter skipper, his ketch and his
satnav while pondering the
photograph of the vagrant
plotter screen. I couldn’t help
wondering what he’d have
made of the datum shift.