December 22, 2014
Please read “Passage Brain?” below first.
Is it possible? Is trigonometry exempt from passage brain? I wasn’t even going to try, but I just figured out that, right now, we have two knots of current pushing us north.
We’re doing 6.1 knots. We’re steering 20 degrees further south of our course line to hold our course. 6.1 x sin(20) = 2.oh something. Now, granted, it took me a little longer to figure this out than normal. I started thinking about it when I was on my last watch and gave up. After 6 hours sleep, the solution came to me.
And let me insert a little bitching here: we have the latest and greatest in Simrad electronics onboard and it doesn’t calculate current. Stupid! (Maybe the developers had Passage Brain?)
Are there other things that are exempt from Passage Brain? I don’t think there can be many ’cause right now, I don’t feel like I could think my way out of a paper bag. After an afternoon and night of sails banging around (wind mostly behind us and an unfriendly sea) and being knocked on our side (unfriendly sea again), I am tired and I want to go home! (Don’t really know where that is anymore though.)
Anyway, at present, we’re 50 miles off the Australia’s coast. After we turn at the top of Fraser Island (Sandy Cape), we have about another 50 miles to go to Bundaberg. With luck, and some diesel fuel in addition to continued wind, we might make it before it’s totally dark. That’d be a day ahead of schedule. -Rich
