About.com Guide to Sailing


Puget Sound – The fog never lifted from some parts of the island. Still, there were countless sailboats enjoying the calm conditions.

My recent post on the Coast Guard rescue of a sailboat that went aground in the fog received several comments critical of my assertion that an inexpensive backup GPS could have prevented this disaster and subsequent expensive rescue. I apparently gave the impression that GPS was the only, or best, solution—something I didn’t quite intend.

As readers rightfully pointed out, these sailors could have avoided the situation altogether with basic navigational skills (even dead reckoning with paper charts) and good planning. And even with a GPS they could have gone aground if they simply headed for a waypoint and paid little attention to a current or other factors that could sweep them off course into the shallows. GPS, certainly, is not some sort of guaranteed answer to the difficulty of navigating with limited visibility.

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