Navigation error
There was a time when we navigated by relying on the mystical concepts of dead reckoning and distance run by counting the miles clocked up on the Walker Log. But the lessons learnt from that alchemy of archaic skills hold as good today as they did then.
We had been picking our way up the Outer Hebrides in a small boat, a Sadler 25 – me as skipper – but only when my wife said so – two children and a Dalmatian called Fletch.
After a spell storm bound in Wizard Pool, during which Fletch devoured the last of our food – a bucket of fresh mackerel left unguarded in the cockpit – we headed for Rodel where there was the prospect of a bus and maybe a shop somewhere on its route.
The pilot book advised us not to make the turn through the narrow entrance to the bay until we saw a conspicuous building with a red roof. Eager eyes scanned the coastline and sure enough, there it was – a red roof.
In we went, confident at our distance run and the confirmation of the ‘conspicuous’ landmark, using rule-of-thumb dead reckoning to keep tabs on our approach. Truth dawned slowly. Our red roof was in fact an abandoned croft and only red because of the rust. We retreated and retraced our route. Back out at sea we did some thinking – maybe our calculations were wrong
Just up the coast we saw another red roof, this time on a functional building. In we went, found the pool and dropped the hook. A certain amount of comment followed to the effect that the skipper shouldn’t be so damned stupid and take a bit more care. And the lesson here: never allow wishful thinking to replace the facts.