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capsize in LI, NY

That's why I refuse to sink. I cant seem to figure out how to call for help so I wont need to.
 
Take this case - even when you do call for help they don't know how to find you.
 
It seems almost impossible to believe that the police boat couldn't use a grid coord. I thought you could enter a coord in any GPS chart plotter. Though I admit that I have never actually done it on my Garmins but I know I can. I would hope that the police would actually practice such stuff so they wouldn't have to look it up in the manual.

Heck, if you know your current coord - which can be constantly displayed - you can (or should be able to) immediately know what general direction to start proceeding to get to the site's coord. You can always figure out the exact point as you go.

Again, I would think this sort of thing would be a constant training requirement...

Guess not.
 
sgharford said:
My GPS display was set to something other than Degrees, Minutes, Seconds a few years back. When I read it off to the Boat US Tow captain he did not know what I was talking about. This captain appeared seasoned and I was between City Island and Throgs Neck Bridge on Long Island Sound, which I told him, yet he still could not make heads or tails of my coordinates. No excuse for Nassau County, but just saying Boat US captain had no idea either and why I make mention of this. Maybe it could've saved a life if this was the case regarding this tragic loss, or maybe even save the lives of someone reading this. One should familiarize themselves with how to physically read off Lat and Longitude as well so when time comes you not wasting time trying to explain the numbers on your display. Honestly, it wasn't until I installed DSC radio and noticed the coordinates were reading different then GPS that I figured out you could change coordinate display on GPS.
Click to expand...
Interesting point. What was the gps set to? Was it TD instead of Lat/Lon? Do modern gps units even have TD as an option? I know most can convert TD to lat/lon but not sure if they can display it for position.
 
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MikeP said:
It seems almost impossible to believe that the police boat couldn't use a grid coord. I thought you could enter a coord in any GPS chart plotter. Though I admit that I have never actually done it on my Garmins but I know I can. I would hope that the police would actually practice such stuff so they wouldn't have to look it up in the manual.

Heck, if you know your current coord - which can be constantly displayed - you can (or should be able to) immediately know what general direction to start proceeding to get to the site's coord. You can always figure out the exact point as you go.

Again, I would think this sort of thing would be a constant training requirement...

Guess not.
Click to expand...
Mike,
I think the problem here is the police couldn't make sense of the coordinates. The operator may have been giving info other than Lat/Lon.
 
I'm basing my observations on our eyewitness:

CTdave said:
The first boat on the scene called for help & gave his exact lat/lon. As he was calling for help in a very clear and professional voice, the Nassau County police asked how many people were in the water. " A lot, 15 or 20, we need help immediately".
Nassau marine patrol kept asking for a landmark or bouy & said the lat/lon didnt help them. This killed a good 10 minutes until my friend who was on the scene finally set off his epirb & said "here is the exact location" as he sent up four flares.
The USCG had the lat/lon & were en route but were 12 minutes out,
Click to expand...

The CG could find them, SeaTow could find them...

There's a scarcity of landmarks on the water. One should be able to rely on giving coordinates in a distress situation.
 
Watch out for a limitation of liability proceeding seeking to limit the liability of the owner to the value of the vessel. I hope his carrier knows about this.
 
His lawyer is a specialist in Admiralty Law and writes a legal column for Long Island Boating World. He knows.
 
Scrod said:
His lawyer is a specialist in Admiralty Law and writes a legal column for Long Island Boating World. He knows.
Click to expand...

He just wrote an article 2 months ago in Boating World on the 100th anniversary of Titanic sinking - How White Star Line, the British owners, filed for limitation of liability under US law in New York at the time. Max liability at that time was $15/ton.
 
I saw it. IIRC White Star won so the plaintiffs switched the venue to the UK where they could recover more, although not much more.
 
I think the "modern" way to do lat/long is with decimal system now. It's really much simpler to input and deal with on electronic navigation systems.

But one problem with all these easy electronic gadgets is nobody knows where they are anymore. These car GPS's even turn my brain to mush....I used to always at least have a sense of direction and could backtrack my mistakes. I find if I use the GPS too much, I turn quite stupid LOL
 
I always figured the Degrees, Minutes, Seconds were the standard because all the paper charts I have worked with are in this format. Do they make paper charts in Decimal format?
 
Like Krush says, the problem with car GPS and that kind of thing is you are just following the bouncing ball- you don't know where you are in relation to everything else. So when it gets you lost or facing a road that is closed for construction etc, you don't know how to get out of there and get where you want to go. I still carry a road atlas in my car. It may not be digital, but I know how to use it if my GPS lets me down. I like my GPS a lot, but it hasn't made maps obsolete.

I do better on the water, maybe because what you see on a GPS navigator resembles what you see on a paper chart, and because you can zoom out and get the big picture more easily. But I still carry a chart book, too. The power can't go off on a chart book. Or a compass.
 
I did exactly that going to Dr Jim's house a few years ago. I was driving toward Annapolis from the south and entered his street address and followed the instructions. I paid no attention at all - just followed the GPS. I got a verbal "in 900 feet you will arrive at your destination," looked around and was nowhere near his area. I was miles away from his house...but at the same street name/number but a different actual street. The GPS took me to the closer of the two and I had absolutely no idea where I was or how I got there. I realized that day the reality that if you are just doing what the GPS says, you have NO idea what the heck you're doing or where the heck you are.

Kinda like those Airfrance pilots who crashed an airbus into the Atlantic because they didn't recognize they were in a stall for 30+000 feet - something a brand new pilot learns to do in the first couple of lessons.
 
When I was cruising up to Little Shark River I heard a CG broadcast from Key West giving lat/lon in decimal., sounded odd.
 
Doing calculations and stuff with Deg, Min, Sec is a pain in the butt!

My old car GPS that got stolen (Garmin) was better than the new car GPS (Garmin). The thing got stupider. It will have me run down a side road parallel to an interstate even the the on ramp is 100 feet in the "wrong" direction. I never trust them for the big picture trip planning. It doesn't have common sense and may go down goofy roads even though it's "faster".

I also always have a busted up road atlas somewhere in the car. Usually I just look at the map on the internet before the trip to plan the route. Then I have to listen to the annoying lady "recalculating" for a while until she relents and figures out the route I am heading.
 
The decimel format was popular with loran and reffered to as TD (time differance), correctly used it is more accurate the lat, long. Some GPS will read out in either lat long or TD. Conversion solutions are readily available online.
 
There's a decimal format for degrees/minutes/seconds that's different from LORAN TDs. I don't have a GPS handy, but it's something like XX° XX.XXX'. By breaking down minutes into thousandths instead of 60ths you can get more resolution. I would assume that's why the CG is using it.
 
I think you will find the CG will do it either way, depending what the requester is using.
 
That sounds like the sensible way to handle it. Unlike that other outfit that couldn't figure it out no matter what format it was in.
 
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