It’s OK to Travel with a Bathrobe #6: A Good Sailor has to be a Good Geographer – Europe

A good sailor has to be a good geographer

Not only do they know how to sail, they know the exact position of every cape and every bay around the globe, they have a world atlas in the head. Fantastic, their geography teachers in high school would be so proud. Mine always said travelling was the best study anyway.

And even more surprising, until the GPS came about 15 years ago to make navigator’s lives easier, they still found out the position with the sextant and the compass. Nothing had changed much since the Middle Ages really, except maybe for that guy making calculations all day long, now they used a calculator. But every new destination point was determined looking at the stars and the sun, the drawing of the coast and other natural readings.

Now a whole navigation book as thick as a Gouda cheese is entered into a tiny computer that works with the satellites up there in space, so far from the water. They are so smart those gadgets, they know where you are, where you are going, your speed, the estimated time of arrival and if you are deviating the boat from the straight route. That, and the radar to avoid crashing the cork against a giant cargo ship or get tangled on the nets of a fishing boat while they try to catch tuna. So now the good sailors and good geographers of the seven seas can relax a little, thinking they don’t have to go out to hear what Orion or the North Star has to say.

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