An Old Salt navigates.

One of the guys out here once took a job delivering a boat for someone. The owner hired him as a captain because he felt he didn't have the necessary navigational skill.

The boat was in Florida and the owner wanted it to be in Boston.

A lot of the wealthier boat owners hire captains for things like this and for the most part seem to be fascinated with the navigational aspect. They think the captain is going to be making constant observations with a sextant and doing a minute by minute check on the various electronics. They are usually sadly disappointed to see how simple things can be in real life. 

After the first day out when the captain never did any kind of serious navigation the owner came to him worried. He was tactful. He asked the captain to teach him to navigate.

Now this guy I know really isn't the epitome of tact and sesitivity. He turned to the owner and pointed to the magnetic compass.

"See the letter 'N'? We follow that for about three days. Then we make the letter 'W' go to the front of the compass and turn on the regular AM/FM radio. If we hear Country and Western music we make the boat go 'N' for another day."

The owner looked shocked.

He continued. "When we hear wicked good rock n' roll we turn 'W' again and head on in and look around."

The shocked owner asked him if he knew where he was.

"Sure," he replied. "we're off the coast of North America. It's an entire continent, a CONTINENT for God's sake! You don't think we're going to miss it, do you?"

The owner sat and thought a minute.

"I guess not," he replied.

A couple days later they made a landfall off of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The skipper plotted a simple compass course, followed it and they simply waltzed into Boston Harbor.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY