T&T: "landlubbers"??

[C. Marin Faure]

 >Now, to really throw in a curve ball with hand steering, take the  
average
trawler driver and have him hand steer with a compass that is reverse
reading, that is, you read the compass course from the part of the  
compass
card closest to you, instead of the normal compass where you read the
compass card from the section of the card closest to the bow.

The compass at the lower helm station on our boat reads both ways.   
There are degree markings on the vertical edge of the card as well as  
on the top of the card.  My wife and I always use the compass to hold  
a heading.  We use the GPS plotters to tell us if the compass heading  
we are holding is the correct one to keep us on course.  Using the  
top of the compass card is intuitive--- you simply "drive" the lubber  
line in the direction of the heading you want by steering the boat in  
the same direction.  Using the aft face of the card has become  
automatic, too, but it was not intuitive at first.  But we quickly  
learned to think of it as "which direction would I need to shift my  
butt to get to the desired heading?"  If the desired heading is to  
starboard, we'd have to shift our butt to port to get to the heading  
on the card.  Which means we have to move the stern of the boat to  
port which, of course, is what the wheel is actually doing when you  
turn it to starboard.

Sounds silly but it's worked for us and now after ten years we don't  
really have to think about it.  My wife, who's considerably shorter  
than I am, uses the aft face of the card to hold a course.  I use the  
top of the card. although I'll use the aft face if I want to fine- 
tune the heading because there are hash marks every 5 degrees on the  
vertical edge of the card as opposed to the top, which is marked in  
N, NE, E, SE, S, etc. with hash marks every 15 degrees between them.

It is certainly tempting to steer using the plotters alone, but we  
know that the day we depend totally on the plotters and lose our  
ability to steer by the compass is the day the plotters or the  
electrical system will crap out on us.  Murphy's Law, right?


____________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington