Navigation

[Thiad]

Even as a pilot and former military, navigation is not a strong point. Looking at a compass in a plane is, at least for me, a whole lot different. For diving, I had a great instructor but admit that as an OW and AOW student, it was task-load that killed me. So when it came time to do my nav course, I spent a lot of time walking around with a towel on my head tripping over the dog. That was a fantastic course and it gave me so much confidence in my skills - which is something I think a lot of people lack.

I've absolutely screwed it up at times and have no shame about using pop-up navigation to find out where I'm at. I may get teased about it, but well, sucking up my pride is a whole lot better than finding myself in a very bad situation. The one thing I am sure of, however, is you need to do it in order to become proficient at it and you need to be proficient if you want to dive safely. Every dive is used to hone those skills.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I HATE navigation. The worst is the kind of dive where I'm on a boat and diving without a DM, and the pre-dive brief involves a sketch on a whiteboard and instructions to "follow the coral to such-and-such, turn left until you find the big rock, then ...." It all sounds good enough, but as soon as I'm down the anchor line it all looks the same to me. There's coral EVERYWHERE, and with all the cracks and formations it can be difficult to know what to follow, except in the most general direction. I've gotten nicely lost on such dives. It's a different story when there's a wreck to orient oneself to, or for shore diving in Bonaire where you can easily follow the reef. I can use a compass, but I haven't been on many dives where a compass is very useful, since we typically want to follow the natural features rather than swim in a straight line.

Has no one commercialized a recreational underwater inertial navigation unit so that divers could see at least a rough estimate of their path on a screen?

 

[101recon]

I'm ex military as well and agree with what the other vets have said. I had about 30 years of experience with land nav when I started diving and it was still a bit of a challenge to apply my nav skills underwater. The pace/kick count, or determining distance traveled was my biggest hurdle. I also found that I tend to swim a bit to the right when trying to move in a straight line without reference points.

I think it should also be noted that there are a fair number of people who can't navigate on land very well, much less underwater. Don't be too hard on yourself. A lot of people never do get it. My only advice would be to practice.....a lot! Learn your own faults and how to compensate for them. Then practice some more.

 

[boulderjohn]

I
The one thing I don't understand as we haven't practiced kick counting yet is how that leads to a relaxing, fun dive? Why would I want to count kicks when I'm out for recreation? It's one thing to pace count when you are doing a land navigation course or running battle lanes, it's an entirely different thing when I'm trying to enjoy a reef underwater. Can someone explain that to me?

There is normally no reason to count kick cycles. I have only done it once outside of instruction that I can remember, and it was for a very special exercise.

How you navigate depends upon the kind of terrain you are visiting. What works perfectly on a sloping wall dive in Bonaire is useless for exploring a wide, flat area in Key Largo. If you have a few key principles and skills, and if you use your imagination, you can figure out how to apply them in a given situation.

The normal reason you would use kick cycles is to navigate a square or triangle. Outside of an AOW class, there isn't much use for that. On the other hand, navigating a rectangle can be very useful for exploring a wide, flat area, In that case, you would turn your corners based on something like air consumption rather than kick cycles, making sure to return to a distinctive starting point (like a long, trench-like opening in a coral bed) with enough gas. If you tried to hit a specific point like that using kick cycles, you would easily miss because depending upon the current, the kick cycles in one direction would be quite different from the opposite direction.

So, don't worry too much about the kick cycles. If you use them twice in your life, you will be ahead of me.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

I spent last weekend working with 4 AOW students for two days. One had 5 prior dives, two had twenty to thirty, and one had eighty dives before the class. At the outset, two performed as if they had never seen a compass, and the other two were very limited in their skill. After taking time to help them rise to a level of competence through repetition and application of skills, I spoke to the dive center owner about having compasses required for aow students to buy if they lacked one. His response was that there is little demand- most customers rely on dive leaders for navigation. We had a good conversation, but I think he was right in saying many (most?) divers are content with being able to go on led dives. I for one will continue to emphasize navigation skills and compass use (and ownership) as a core skill for truly competent independent divers.
DivemasterDennis

 

[MegaBMan25]

Relying on dive leaders for nav seems to be the norm. I'm taking the U/W nav specialty , for 1 -get another specialty for MSD (last specialty i need), and 2- improve my nav skills. I admit that i do follow the dive leader for naviagtion on dives. But now, with the number of dives i have done this year, how i want to improve my skills, and where i want to go with certifications (possible DM training in spring), i think it is imperative i really learn navigation. As for now, on a dive where I need to navigate i write down the headings and/or bring a map of the quarry. Otherwise i just follow the group (Most of my dives this summer have been as the rescue diver (certified as such) and have been watching the OW and AOW students and looking for possible issues new divers tend to have, or as a OW or AOW student's buddy).
Even thought the poll suggest following the dive leader is how some navigate, have practical knowledge and skill is something that should be "in the back pocket" of every diver should they need it.

 

[OldNSalty]

I also found that I tend to swim a bit to the right when trying to move in a straight line without reference points.

In 30 years on land you probably learned to compensate for that but people do the same thing when land navigating with a compass. It is based on being left or right handed. You will come up slightly to one side of your objective over a long course and if I recall correctly, right handed people will come up to the right of the objective, left handed to the left. In the water I suspect it is even more so.

There was also an interesting study done that showed people can not walk in a straight line without a compass or visual clues. If you take someone into a large open field on a dark or foggy night and tell them "walk in that direct to the town that is 1/2 a mile away", they will always walk in circles but swear they are going straight. I don't recall if the direction they circle is related to being left/right handed.

Disclaimer: I was an infantry officer which meant that I was all at once totally responsible for navigating/guiding my units over large areas of land while being required to be incapable of reading a map or using a compass. Take everything I say with a grain of salt.

 

[nimoh]

being right handed, perhaps I should seek out a dive buddy that is left handed to keep me in check

 

[TSandM]

Hmm . . . that's interesting information about the drift. I always assumed I just kick harder with one leg than with the other. (I'm right-handed, and definitely drift to the right!)

 

[boulderjohn]

A couple of years ago I went to a local dive site with someone who had only been diving for 6 months. The site has poor visibility characteristically, and it was worse than normal that day. The only thing of interest in the site is a sunken Cessna, its location marked by a mooring ball at the surface, secured to a block below with a chain. The plane is several hundred feet away from shore. This relatively new diver wanted to practice his navigation skills, so he took a heading on the mooring ball and we set off. I figured that if we missed to the left, we would hopefully hit the plane, and if we missed to the right, we would eventually be in water so deep we would know we had missed it.

Our trip out ended when he ran right into the chain under the mooring ball. Because of the visibility, we didn't see it until he was just about to hit it.

That's pretty good navigation for a beginning diver. It really isn't all that hard to do. What you need to do, though, is exactly what this guy did: commit to practicing it.