Now and Then
South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Thu 7 Jun 2018 07:42
Having dinner watching todays filmwork on TV in the saloon is a boatlife far away from my experiences 30 years ago.
The lower picture is from sailing Spitsbergen (Svalbard) on our 32 ft Scandinavian doubleender, Nemrod. Navigation was based on dead reconning (walker log with rope/propeller and Sestrel compass with deviationtable) corrected by celestial navigation. The only electronics onboard was an RDF (radio direction finder) for taking bearings to radiobeacons and a VHF radio. Position out at sea could be +- 10nm accurate and making landfall in bad visibility was quite a challenge.
Allthough much more demanding the accomplishment was also greater. Crossing the polar part of the North Atlantic ocean on a boat like Nemrod was uncomfortable and demanding but also so rewarding. I would even say it brings out properties inhereted from very ancient generations like for example intuition. A property rarely discussed in our secular time when everything should be rational,scientific and/or algorithmbased.
