Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine - November 2020

NOVEMBER 2020 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 16
STEP UP TO
EYEBALL
NAVIGATION
by Don Street
When cruising and racing in the Caribbean Sea, the ability to “read” the water’s
depth by its color and texture is an essential skill. This skill is known as eyeball
navigation. You’ll quickly learn that dark indigo-blue water is deep, turquoise is
shallower, and reefs are brownish, for example.
You need to be able to see into the water when navigating in in reef-encumbered
areas, and this is best done with the sun overhead. If you use common sense to avoid
reflection and glare off the surface — i.e. not heading west to enter or leave harbors
after 1500 hours, or heading east before 1100 — you can cruise the Caribbean
relying almost completely on eyeball navigation.
Height of eye is a key factor — the higher your eyeballs are off the deck, the better
your view into the water. Eyeball navigation is much better from the bow than from
the cockpit. Standing on top of the bow pulpit is much better than standing on deck.
And a crewmember piloting from the lower spreaders has an even better view.
Unfortunately, with the almost universal use of GPS and chart plotters, eyeball
navigation has largely been forgotten — sometimes with disastrous results.
See the September 2014 issue of Compass (www.caribbeancompass.com/online/
september14compass_online.pdf, page 27) and note the picture of a Swan 90 hard
aground on the western side of Spithead Channel at Antigua’s Nonsuch Bay. The
skipper was reportedly looking at his chart plotter rather than at the water. The
salvage and repair cost ended up in the region of US$800,000.
In contrast, my yawl Iolaire once departed Grenada on a one-month charter cruise
to St. Thomas. It was the days before electronic navigation, and as we reached the
northwest corner of Grenada, I discovered that our charts of the Grenadines had
been left in the Grenada Yacht Club bar!
'If someone is on the lower spreaders
and the light is good,
everything becomes crystal clear.
Mast steps make climbing
to the lower spreaders easy. '
Neither I nor my 18-year-old crew, Ed Pionkowski, had ever sailed the Grenadines
before, but I was not willing to go back to St. George’s to pick up the charts. So I told
Ed to take two small cockpit cushions and secure one to the top of each lower
spreader so an eyeball navigator sitting up there would be comfortable. (We had a
flag halyard on the starboard spreader and we rigged another flag halyard on the
port spreader so that no matter which tack we were on, the person on the spreader
could be supplied with cold Heineken.)
We spent a week cruising the Grenadines using only eyeball navigation. We even
entered the Tobago Cays from the southern entrance, an entrance that today some
bareboat managers and cruising guide authors claim is too difficult to use. But if you
read the sailing instructions in the booklet that accompanies Imray Iolaire chart B31
or B311 (or the piloting directions found in Street’s Guide Martinique to Trinidad),
and if there is good light and an experienced eyeball navigator is in the spreaders or
even on the foredeck, the southern entrance is quite do-able.
In my early days of exploring the Eastern Caribbean, often without the aid of a
detailed chart, I or one of my crew would spend a lot of time conning Iolaire from
the lower spreader. Until I reached my middle 70s, with the aid of the external
halyards I could still climb Iolaire’s mast without a bosun’s chair. Then I started
sailing Li’l Iolaire, a 28-foot yawl that had an aluminium mast with internal
halyards. Because of the internal halyards, it was almost impossible for me to climb
Li’l Iolaire’s mast, so I installed steps to the lower spreaders. The mast steps made
climbing to the lower spreaders easy and I did it regularly when entering harbors
and exploring new anchorages.
In some areas, such as parts of the Western Caribbean, electronic charts aren’t
very accurate. But I think every skipper of every cruising yacht in the Caribbean will
realize that now, with internal halyards almost universal, the chances of having a
crewmember climb to the lower spreader to con the boat is zero — unless the mast
has steps.
So, before the next cruising season starts, check the various catalogues, find mast
steps that appeal to you and install them as far as the lower spreaders. Installing
mast steps is a job that you can do with the mast in the boat. A tip: run some light
line, such as Dyneema, between the outboard ends of the steps to keep halyards
from getting fouled.
Whenever there is a tricky pilotage situation, if someone is on the lower spreaders
and the light is good, everything becomes crystal clear.
As a bonus, at anchor those crewmembers who are too nervous to go aloft under
sail can climb the mast via the steps (plus a bosun’s chair for the “belt and
suspenders” effect) and obtain wonderful views and photographs that are not
available from deck level.
So step on up. The view from the lower spreaders is great!
Throughout this, our Silver Jubilee Year, Caribbean Compass is proud to share
articles from our archives. A version of this article first appeared in November 2016
— and information is just as useful today.