Developing navigation skills

[RJP]

My first season of diving was great fun, and I look forward to this year. I realize a huge weakness I have is navigation skills.

Do you have any ideas on strategies or drills to use to most effectively learn navigation skills? Thank you.

This is why I'm a wreck diver!

1. There's a rope.
2. There is a boat tied to each end of the rope.
3. If you get lost, follow the rope in either direction.
4. If the boat on that end of the rope is underwater, go to the other end of the rope.

Of course, if the boat on the that end of the rope is underwater too...

:shocked2:

 

[TSandM]

Well, I found compass navigation got immensely simpler when I stopped looking at the top of the compass and worrying about the damned bezel. On a Suunto SK7, there is a small side window that indicates the course you are swimming. The way home is that number plus or minus 180 (depending on whether the number is bigger or smaller than 180). When you combine this information with depth contours and natural navigation (landmarks, wave patterns, etc.) it gets actually fairly easy to make your way around. The whole reciprocal bearing/bezel thing was and is beyond me.

 

[gcbryan]

If you have a local quarry to practice in it should be fairly simple with a bit of practice. Just take a relative heading straight out from land and turn the bezel until the marker is over the point of the compass needle.
Keep the marker over the needle point and you will be going out.

Coming back in will be putting the marker over the tail of the compass needle and keeping it there.

You can go left or right and either East or West will be under the marker. This is simple "relative" navigation.

Combine that with taking a mental note of how long you are swimming in one direction and try to take the same amount of time (if no current) in the reverse direction. Make note of landmarks along the way and that's basically how it's done.

It makes a lot more sense if you have someone locally to demonstrate this a time or two.

 

[CamG]

Greetings Bigsnowdog and you have received some great advice so far. How many dives do you actually have? I found that as Jim and Steve have mentioned that it really is a matter of combining several skills along with simple compass reading.
As TSandM mentioned the Suunto SK7 is a great compass and I replaced my other one because it would not work after descending beyond 100'. The SK7 has worked perfectly at all depths.
Navigation is a matter of awareness and practice. Take your time and get assistance if you need to. The different nav. courses that some quarries have can be useful places to practice. Beware practice in new or strange locations and public waters are dangerous enough without trying to learn navigation skills. Our local lakes here in Indiana are not diver friendly, boaters are not aware of current regulations nor do they abide by them.
This is why safe training places, quarries etc. would be the place to start or hire a DM.
Either way you will be ready in no time but just remember to take your time gaining experience and practicing skills it will pay off.
CamG Keep diving....keep training....keep learning!

 

[djb_1965]

My wife was directionally challenged. She had a hard time learning Nav. A big part is to trust you compass. Your mind has a way of playing tricks when you have nothing to visually navigate by. We started by settin a course, then I would navigate it and she would follow along on her compass. Then I would have her navigate and follow and make corrections. Now she can navigate fine, just takes practice and it will come. Most of our local dives are 5-10 foot vis so it is pretty important to us.

 

[Chris12day]

My 21 year old son yesterday did his navigation skill for his AOW.

The captain of the boat told everyone that he was being corteous to another captain and would be moving the boat from its current position to a position about 600 years directly north to another buoy. The captain wanted everyone to surface in 1 hour to meet the boat. Everyone was with either with an instructor or a DM except me and another son (we are both AOW certified).

Almost everyone did what the captained told them to do.....they all missed the boat. A current was flowing from west to east pushing the divers to the east while swimming. I missed the boat by approximately 50 yards to the east, but was a short surface swim.

My understanding from my elder son, is that most of the DMs and insturctors surfaced a few times...to get their bearing on the boat...on their swim. My youngest son and I were the last to return to the boat, approximately 55 minutes from the start of the dive.....so much for real navigation training.....

 

[dkktsunami]

This does not sound like a prudent thing to do (assuming you are talking about an ocean or great lake) - either by the boat captain or the instructors. It's a big ocean and it sounds as if you became separated .........

 

[Jim Lapenta]

That was nothing but lazy BS on the part of everyone conducting the training. It was also a good way to have something very bad happen. 600 yds is a long way. But it is doable. What is also inexcusable is instructors having to surface for bearings. This is a clear lack of preparation on their part. Did anyone mention anything about "intentional error and how to use it? Or how to calculate the amount of error required? Worthless exercise.

I had originally planned to quote this post "I think I am doing well on those things. Perhaps a single skill I need work on is swimming along, simultaneously observing the compass and also keeping some notion of where I am." when I read about this abortion.

Getting to this however, is the last part of the post. This is where good buddy procedures come in. In my AOW and especially in my UW Nav course, even though I do dive solo and navigate successfully while doing so, I stress that Underwater Navigation is as much as team skill as it is an individual one. Many times dive buddies have strengths and weaknesses that actually compliment each other. I had one pair where the one was very good with a compass and the other with observing details and making note of them.

It was during the pre-class interview that we discovered this. Therefore I used those in harmony with each other and tasked them with navigating a course with compass and natural features. It worked out very well. Post dive discussion resulted in them sharing their skills and how they did what they did. Over time I encouraged them to occasionally switch roles. Thus in effect cross training each other.

Work with a good buddy. Decide who will do what and stay with it for a time. Then when the team is getting good at finding their way begin to trade off on the responsibilities. It may be that some skills will never be done as well as the other does them, but it will lead to an increased understanding of what the other is doing. This is when the real learning begins.

 

[Chris12day]

I agree Jim. I think that more attention should be paid to what is really an Advanced Open Water Diver. Is it someone who paid their money for a certification and then "performed" the required dives? Or, is it someone who has proven they have mastered the skill under various conditions (high/low vis, current/no current, traveling from point A to point B, not just from point A back to point A?

 

[Hatul]

Here in So California the vis is often poor 8-15 feet and we're swimming through rocky channels, sometimes in dusk, so it's easy to get disoriented. My strategy, at least for shore dives, is to take a bearing towards shore before I submerge and not disturb the bezel of the compass again until the end.

That gives me a direction of orientation. As I'm swimming I look at the compass to know where I'm moving in the dive area, and in my mind where I am from the starting point. My direction of reference is towards shore rather than North/South.

This allows me to roughly get back to the starting point or a point opposite the entry. To get more accurate, on the way back, once I get to about a 10 foot depth I briefly surface and take a bearing to the best exit point, submerge and continue towards my exit point, again by compass navigation.

It's a mistake to navigate by whether it's shallower or deeper as there are areas that get shallower as you swim away from shore.

Adam