Finding Your Way Essay Research Paper FINDING

Finding Your Way Essay, Research Paper

FINDING YOUR WAY. Andrew Smith I couldn’t agree more with Kenneth Grahame’s Water Rat in “Wind in the Willows” : “There is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.” (7) Whether it’s spent fishing, sailing, or simply cruising, a day out on the ocean is a lot of fun. That day of fun can quickly turn into a nightmare if you don’t know exactly where you are, there are all kinds of hazards that need to be avoided. Many people taking to the water rely solely on electronic methods of navigation such as radar or the Global Positioning System to find their way around. People going to sea must learn how to navigate manually without electronic aids. The most popular means of electronic navigation, the Global Positioning System is not always guaranteed to be in operation. People can and do make serious errors when interpreting electronic navigation information without verifying their position by other means. Mishaps such as lightning strikes and engine failures can render a boat without electricity disabling electronic navigation systems. GLOBAL POSTIONING SYSTEM. There is no guarantee that the Global Positioning System (GPS) will always be in operation. GPS is a satellite-based radio-navigation system developed and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense. While in operation, it permits land, sea, and airborne users to determine their three-dimensional position, velocity, and time twenty four hours a day, in all weather, anywhere in the world with a precision and accuracy far better than other radionavigation systems available today or in the foreseeable future (”GPS frequently”). However, there are some issues that need to be considered. One of these is the year two thousand computer problem. It stems from the fact that many computer programs are using a two-digit date field and assume the year is nineteen hundred and something. When the year two thousand arrives, a two-digit date becomes ‘zero zero’ and could be interpreted as an invalid date. All generations of GPS satellites are unaffected by the year two thousand computer problem. However, it is vital that GPS users verify that their receivers and applications will work properly through these events. (”GPS Year Y2K”). What this basically means is that not all manufacturers of GPS receivers were aware of this issue. Anyone at sea on that day had better have some other means of navigation to fall back on as their receiver could stop functioning. There is another problem that is not as well known as the year two thousand problem and that is the End of Week Rollover problem. The End of Week Rollover problem is a problem that occurs every twenty years in the GPS system. GPS system time, which counts weeks, started counting on midnight of the fifth of January nineteen eighty. It uses a system that counts up to one thousand and twenty four weeks and then goes back to zero. At midnight on the 21st and 22nd of August 1999, the GPS week will rollover from week one thousand and twenty three back to zero. This could be interpreted as an invalid date by affected GPS receivers rendering them inoperable.Imagine if you were sailing overnight on August 21st and you were not aware of the End of Week Rollover issue. Suddenly you find yourself at sea at night with no means of navigation. If you do not have coastal navigation skills you will find yourself in serious trouble. These are only the problems that we are currently aware of, who knows what is waiting around the corner. Whether its problems with the GPS system itself, or with your receiver, it should not be taken for granted that GPS will always be operable. HUMAN ERROR People can and do make mistakes. Eighty five percent of all accidents in the marine industry occur through human error. (”Safety: we are”) One area of navigation where mistakes are easily made is with operating radar, a favorite electronic navigation aid in fog. The Boat Owners Association of the United States has documented this fact with incidents claimed on their insurance pollicies. Consider the Member and his wife who were coping with a thick fog by following a commercial fishing vessel down a river in Maine. They continued past the mouth of the river , to a navigational buoy about a mile offshore. They then headed their cruiser toward another marker on the chart, but never found it. Setting a course from his estimated position, the boat owner adjusted the radar to show his destination, directly ahead. Proceeding in very limited visibility at approximately five knots, the vessel shortly went hard aground on an underwater ledge. Trapped by a dropping tide, the cruiser had to be abandoned; it later went ashore and broke up – a total loss (Claim #902517) (”Coping with”).There are several lessons here; one of them being that using radar to locate navigational aids in the fog takes practice. Then, too, the radar may not be aligned to the boat’s heading, which means the target on the screen will be skewed. If you find yourself