Navigation

[drrich2]

Do you just not have the bandwidth to manage everything you need to do to dive, AND handle navigation?

That's a part of it. For reference, my mindset works something like this: introvert, spent a lot of time alone growing up, spend a lot of time in my mind, don't notice the world around me as much as most people seem to & trying to is like walking around with a book on my head, tend to pay 'focused attention' rather than multi-task, don't retain environmental detail if I don't know at the time the detail is important & make a mental note of it, and am strongly a written word learner rather than oral (I can't take verbal directions to drive places - you'll pry my GPS from my cold dead fingers - and about all I get from listening to boat dive briefings is max. time, max. depth, and which guy to follow - and yes, I DO try to listen!). My wife is often amused at how we can drive a given route many times & I'll notice something (like, say, a large building) for the first time, as though it's new. And like another poster, I'm one of those people who doesn't recognize distinctive objects well; to me, there ARE NO DISTINCTIVE CORAL HEADS IN THE OCEAN (unless you've got one maybe 10 foot diameter, and all others for miles are small). On land I have little geographical awareness. In college, I was a double major in Biology & Chemistry & loathed a lot of the labs (hands on stuff). I couldn't do the yoyo tricks when I was a kid. Learning to tie my shoes & drive were ordeals.

So you can imagine my views on navigation. I respect & value it. I bought the PADI Nav. specialty manual & read it a few times, and watched the DVD. I eventually acquired a conceptual grasp of the basic (eg.: lubber line parallel to land lubber - me, right angle turns add or subtract 90 degrees from heading (or bearing, whichever term was correct,) etc...). But it's very deliberate, not fluid or natural. You can hear the gears turning in my head while I work a compass. I'm not going to be photographing the grouper & morays while being mindful of navigation, and I dive the Caribbean to have a good time.

So, what do I do with all this? My unguided dives are shore dives in Bonaire or a local quarry. My boat dives are Caribbean dives with good viz., a dive guide I stick to like white on rice, and this generally does well.

As time goes on & my skills hopefully improve, I might, MIGHT, eventually someday reach the level where I'd be interested in one of those unguided California charters or perhaps a live-aboard trip on The Fling to the Flower Garden Banks.

As we are taught, I aim to dive within the limits of my training and personal competence.

Richard.

P.S.: I would love to see an underwater wrist GPS unit integrated into dive computers. Whoo-hoo!!!

 

[Lucas Cordina]

Now, a lot of people do say that it's wise to

1. look at a distinctive feature
2. take a bearing and swim towards that feature
3. Find a feature on the same bearing
4. Repeat

This way, you can find your way back easily, yeah

But now, what if you didn't want to go in a straight line?

Let's say, I see a distinctive feature in one direction, take a bearing, but see another distinctive feature once I get there, except the second one is not on the same bearing?

How would you navigate towards it and back to your entry/exit point without having to backtrack every single feature you took a bearing towards?

I'm curious about this one

 

[exposure]

This happened to me too. Turns out I just had my fins on the wrong foot. :depressed: Try switching your left and right fins....hope this helps!

You can cut part of the left fin too

Anyway very interesting thread. From my own experience, I learned basic skills during my OW and AOW. I think at OW you focus mainly on your bouyancy and maybe managing your level of stress, thus it looks a bit to early for the right concentration on navigation skill. After these 2 levels, nothing about navigation just following a guide. It is not the way a dive should be for me. So now, I try to practice navigation most of the time. On my last trip, they were some possibility to explore the local reef from shore with a bit of nav to don't see always the same place. A great experience that need some progress...

With all tips already explain, I would add one, do forget to look behind you when you progress. So you can see how things look like when you'll be back. That can help with rocks that have stange shapes. What you see on the way can look differently when you'll be back.

 

[boulderjohn]

Now, a lot of people do say that it's wise to

1. look at a distinctive feature
2. take a bearing and swim towards that feature
3. Find a feature on the same bearing
4. Repeat

This way, you can find your way back easily, yeah

But now, what if you didn't want to go in a straight line?

Let's say, I see a distinctive feature in one direction, take a bearing, but see another distinctive feature once I get there, except the second one is not on the same bearing?

How would you navigate towards it and back to your entry/exit point without having to backtrack every single feature you took a bearing towards?

I'm curious about this one

Did you read my post? In case you missed it, I will repeat part of it.

3. Take a compass heading on it.
4. Forget about the compass for a while and start looking at the pretty things as you head out in that general direction. Don't count kicks.
5. As you explore and gaze at the coral and the fish, keep an eye on the landmark you observed earlier.
6. Eventually get to that landmark and explore around it.​

Nowhere does I say go in a straight line. As long as you always know where that landmark is and can get to it eventually, it doesn't matter what you do on the way. You can zig zag, go in circles, go past it, whatever you want. When you get to that landmark, you know where you are and how to get back to the boat. You can explore quite a broad area while essentially going back and forth.

Use your imagination. There are other ways you can use that basic skill. For example, you might head out toward a really big landmark that is quite a ways off and do the entire dive in that area. Go wherever you want, as long as you can see it. I once led a dive in Key Largo in which we went off in a certain direction for a while until I huge coral head on my heading. I led the group in a very irregular and zig-zaggy square around it. That took almost the entire dive time. Then I got back to the landmark and followed the reciprocal heading back to the boat.

 

[Lucas Cordina]

That's actually a great way of doing things!

Thanks for pointing it out, definitely something I'll be doing in my next dive!

I just figured the landmark would be used as a way point, and not as something to keep me oriented, funny how things suddenly click into place

 

[boulderjohn]

That's actually a great way of doing things!

Thanks for pointing it out, definitely something I'll be doing in my next dive!

I just figured the landmark would be used as a way point, and not as something to keep me oriented, funny how things suddenly click into place

You can have landmarks that can be either way points or real dive area anchor points. Either way the beauty of having taken that bearing on them is that whatever route you take to get to it will enable you to find your way home.

 

[nimoh]

also, once you get to that landmark, you don't necessarily need to keep going in the same direction to go past it. However, you will need to remember your return bearing for each segment, and a slate or wet notes comes in handy for this.

 

[Lucas Cordina]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, I guess another thing worth doing is to look at the way they look from behind, underwater things seem to look completely different in different angles

 

[nimoh]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, I guess another thing worth doing is to look at the way they look from behind, underwater things seem to look completely different in different angles

good point...yes

 

[boulderjohn]

I was once among a group of divers exploring a shallow wreck. It was the first time diving with the buddy I had. I was still a fairly new diver at the time. At one point my buddy showed me his gauge, which indicated that he had about 1,000 PSI left. We were in about 35 feet of water, so I made a mental note of it but didn't react much. He then took off at a mad pace. Puzzled, I took off after him. Where was he going? and why? We swam out into the blue, with me trying to catch him, until he finally headed to the surface. When I finally caught up with him, he explained that he felt 1,000 PSI was time to get to the surface, and he was surprised I didn't think so, too. He thought he was heading back to the boat when he took off, and he was surprised to find that he had gone in exactly the wrong direction. We were far from the boat.

The boat had been moored very close to the wreck, so it should have been easy to get back. Just to be safe, though, he should have had a compass heading back to the boat from a point on the wreck. It would have saved a long and embarrassing surface swim.

Even in simple navigation situations, I try to have a sense of what direction I have to travel for safety. For example, I was once part of a training exercise along the wall of a deep sink hole with fairly poor visibility. As my buddy and I worked on that exercise, we realized that we had gotten far enough from the wall that we could not see it, and we had gotten completely turned around and didn't know which way to go to find it. No problem. My lubber line was already set in the direction of the wall for just that reason, and we got back in seconds. When I am doing a shore dive, my lubber line is set for the shore. If I am on a boat off a coast, it is set for the coast. You just never know.