Man means nothing he means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower
Or the humblest Yucca tree
He chases round this desert
‘Cause he thinks that’s where I’ll be
That’s why I love mankind
– randy newman

Let’s just get this right out of the way. I HATE navigation.  I mean, I LOVE maps and charts.  As a teenager I used to stare at maps for hours. Even now I enjoy examining them and imagining how to get from point A to point B by car or kayak.  What I hate is academic navigation.  The bit where we toss a bunch of labels on common sense ideas, get all worked up measuring this and adding that to come up with some magical, algebraical solution to paddling across a bay in conditions where most of us should never leave the beach. 

What I’ve found in my own experience is that there are really 2 forms of kayak navigation.  Hobby navigation & real world navigation.  In the hobby you get out the protractor.  Playing navigator is a game in-of-itself that rarely actually involves a kayak in any way.  It’s kayaking for the Sudoku set!  In the real world, most of the time, you keep the land on your left as they say. Only a select few kayakers will ever need to know any more than that.

Now to be fair the conceptual roots of what we teach in kayak navigation are important to everyone who paddles.  While only a small number actually need a chart for our paddling excursions, the concepts of  basic navigation still guide us through our paddling day. We use landmarks to guide us and estimate speed. We use simple triangulation to approximate our location, even if we don’t know the term. We set a bearing by choosing to go, ‘over there’ and paddle our ‘reciprocal bearing’ by going home again.. our sea going brethren need to know and understand the effects of  tides and currents as well. And to be honest, I won’t leave a shore without a deck compass. Still, you’ve got to be some sort of real nerd to use terms like ‘reciprocal bearing’ when talking to friends about getting back to the beach again. LOL!  It’s like using the word “nomenclature”. You may feel like Mr. Wizard using a word which sounds more like the academic term for some form of archaic 14th century English artillery, but simply saying “the bits of the boat ” will do just fine. (It’s enough to explain the bits without having to stop to explain the word for the bits.)

So really I don’t hate navigation at all.  I think we make more if it than we need to sometimes, and don’t always take into account it’s appropriateness to our students place in their learning experience. Why deal with charts  and lighthouse signals when what students really need to know is when to simply stay put on the friggin’ beach!?

The other hang up I have with Navigation classes is how bookish we can get with it. It’s a personal thing. I can stare at worksheets for hours and know nothing of navigation in the end other than I have a throbbing headache. Navigation worksheets are cousin and kin to those fun math problems we got back in grammar school;  “I boarded a train going to hell and saw some devils in the train. 3641 devils got off the train at Inferno Station to terrorize the locals there. 1049 devils got off at Lost Souls Station to eat lunch…” By this time the migraine has already set in.  For some of us visual and experiential learner types, these sorts of problems are quite impossible.  In school I always just skipped over these questions and made up my score with the rest.

So these days as an instructor I avoid teaching navigation like the plague.  I’m happy to teach the broad concepts that get us from point A to point B, but when someone really wants to learn the width and breadth of marine navigation I send them off to someone who is much more literate. (And won’t suffer bouts of  narcolepsy along the way.)  For my part, I find the better part of navigation is in some basic principals and better judgment. Beyond that it’s nappy time.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system I can get to work on this bloody navigation worksheet for this weekends ICE..  Piloting??? Bah, humbug!

Oh, and if you are into those aggravating math problems, try these 3rd grade problems.  At least they are inventive!

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