How did the ancients
do it?
Sailing for days on end, days without land in
sight, sailing through the dark nights. How did the ancients do it? We all know that Colubus cheated,
and actually knew the route to the New World. The Vikings were the
first to make it to Amerika. They needed to rely on the position of
the stars, sun and the moon for navigation. This offcourse, could only
give them the lattitude, as the Longitude problem would be solved a
couple of centuries later in Greenwich. They had primitive compasses,
and a sun stone, a stone that would allow them to locate the sun,
even when covered by clouds. Their ships where sturdy, but open, and
the man and supplies were exposed to the elements. For days, weeks,
months even they would have to endure, not knowing how long to wait
for the next landfall. They could not have seen any rocks at night (especially if the moon is not up, there is cloud cover, or the moon is simply shining from the wrong direction).
The crossing from
Fromentera to Sardinia is some 370 Nautical miles, and we expect this
crossing to take 3 days. Our tank is fueled up, weather forecast
downlowded and checked, the course set, and we are off. We know that
even if there is no wind, our diesel tank will last the whole
stretch, and our larder will provide for far longer than 3 days. We
haven't quite learned how to economize on the water consumption, and we
go through a quarter tank roughly every two days. Fortunately, the
water maker and solar panels can easily keep up with this rate. More
importantly, our music and book collection will last much much longer
than that.
Back to the vikings,
staying motivated, without the luxury of hot showers, music and
books to read, chilled drinks, and fresh food, and unlimited amount
of drinking water, exposed to the elements for weeks on end. Our
crossing went smooth, with the least amount of waves we have had thus far
had in any crossing. For several days we only saw one or two ships
visually. Since the radar and AIS can look much further, these
devices could pick up quite a few more ships. Sometimes you can see
the land when it is as close as a few Nautical miles, and other times
you can see land from around 50 nautical miles. If the land is
mountainous, this will improve the visibility significantly, and at
night, we can see the lighthouses from about 40 nautical miles on a
good night. Our radar can pick up targets from as far as 48 Nautical
miles, if they are big enough. The vikings, of course did not even have lighthouses to go on. The Egyptians started the lighthouse practice, but this technology had not been transferred to the New World when the ancients landed.
This means that you
need to either know that the location where you are planning to make
your landfall is quite large and hard to miss, or alternatively you
need to keep the cross track error in your navigation less than 5
nautical miles on a low visibility conditions, or 50 nautical miles on
high visibility conditions. Fortunately, for the vikings this is true
for America, which stretches across both hemispheres. It actually
becomes quite a lot trickyier when navigating to small islands, such
as the pacific islands, Svalbard, Madeira, and so on. Can you
imagine, to miss the one island in the pacific you where planning to
hit some islands are less than 5 km in diameter, and than having to
go on to Australia? Or Happening on the next possibly uninhabited
and uncharted island? Back in the day, this is the method how quite a few islands where discovered. And even worse, lost! If the navigational notes were off, it could become impossible to find back the place where you spent such a sweet time and planted your flag...
On our 3 day
crossing, I had plenty of time to think about all this. As I write
this, we are less than 30 Nautical Miles away from Sardinia, and we
picked up the first land at about 50 Nautical Miles distance. As I
type this, I am having a chilled fruit juice, and our boat speed is
above 7 knots. When we left, our water tank was at one quarter, right
now it is at 3 quarters full. How Times have changed. My respect for the vikings has deepened by an infinitive amount. Going out there, without knowing what is out there, and whether it is possible at all is in my mind the ultimate proof of courage. And we all know, the vikings had no shortage of courage!
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| SaltyPaws serves freshly made pasta on its crossings |
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| The owner of the SaltyPaws taking a nap |
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| The one vessel we see, and we need to take evasive action! |
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| Tuxington overseeing the evasive nautical manouvres |
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| Another sunset seen from Salty Paws |
loving the pics and commentary. and, the food looks awesome! enjoy!
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