Death of the compass?

Navigation-what's hot and what's not

- Sam Llewellyn

Someone somewhere recently said that compasses on boats are now a waste of space. We inhabit a universe, this person said, in which GPS reigns supreme. Anyone who wastes time looking at a wavering disc decorated with numbers is living in the past and should immediately clap on his top hat and direct his hansom cab to the nearest Home for the Functionally Bewildered. This point of view needs investigation.

It is of course true that aids to navigation have improved over the past half century. This has been handy in the heat we had early this summer, as the navigator was spared the necessity of crouching over the chart table attempting to make pencil marks on a chart greasy with the sweat of the brow. Navigators have been able to relax under the bimini, tablet running Navionics in hand, making sailorly remarks like 'Left a bit' and 'Mind that whale.