How are you at Navigation?

[Teamcasa]

To me, navigation is two things.
It is skill that can be learned or it is an innate ability some people just seem to process.

For me, and I can not explain it, navigation comes easy and I seem to always know where I am and what direction I need to go in order to find what I'm looking for.

My lovely bride just does not have this ability and as such never leads a dive. We do work on the compass skills and if pressed, she can do it if she starts the dive and makes notes as to headings and such.

Many of the buddy's I have used ask if I can navigate and as a result, I end up leading most of the dives. How about you?

 

[300bar]

I do 99% of all navigation.
But then again 90% of my dives are with students.
For me it's just as walking the street,just end up where I started or where I need to be.

Do I never get lost Heck yes,in new locations I do sometimes have to take a new surface barring.But I'm not ashamed to do so.

Most divers I've seen getting lost,never took a new barring, just kept on going in the wrong direction.

 

[*dave*]

I have internal GPS. Unfortunately, it doesn't include an altimeter/depth gauge, so I need to pay close attention to depth and surroundings.

When I first started, my navigation was spot on, but my SA left a bit to be desired. Like golf, half the trick is getting distance down. Many times, I'd blow past the boat or target because I was too deep to recognize the landmarks I'd seen on entry.

Now, I'll spend a few minutes noting the depth of the anchor and taking in the landmarks from different perspectives. On my return, I'll match the depth I observed the anchor from once I get close.

 

[Lottifish]

I'm terrible at it. Leave it to me and I will swim North when I meant to go South every time! By the time I get to the bottom of the anchor I'm completely turned around.

 

[sabbath999]

I am terrible but trying to improve.

I am fine at dive sites I know, but at new sites I am bad.

I am especially bad if somebody is leading the dive, I don't really know why... I do better if I have to rely on myself to find my way back. Also, if I am taking pictures I am concentrating on that and not as much as I need to be on navigation.

I WILL get better, but right now I stink.

 

[TSandM]

I've gotten good at running a compass (no matter what my husband says) and it's a crucial skill here in Puget Soup. I'm also very good at recognizing landmarks and knowing where I've been. Where my navigation comes apart is in finding the boat again, when diving off a charter in unfamiliar territory where there isn't much slope to the bottom (and therefore depth contours aren't very useful).

I had a very embarrassing dive off the Spectre in Southern California. I had two buddies I didn't know before the dive, and therefore one of them led. I kind of paid attention to depth and how much time we had swum away from the boat, but we wound through the kelp, in and out of rock structures, and I remember thinking at some point, "Boy, I'm glad "x" knows where he is!" Shortly thereafter, "X" turned around and signaled to me, "You're #1." I had a moment of near panic, as I thought, "We may end up in Japan if you depend on ME to get us back!" But I got us near, and then asked with the hand signals, "Question, boat?" And we were almost directly under the anchor line.

I don't do much of that kind of diving, and I'm not very good at it.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I was fortunate in that during my Ow checkouts there was a guy who is no longer diving but had a scary sense of direction. His Nav skills were downright awesome. I made my mind up during the next few times we dove together to get as good as he was. I don't know if I'm quite there yet but it's damn close. He instilled in me the idea that every dive is a skills dive and along with whatever other skill I choose to work on, UW Nav is ALWAYS one of them. I took it upon myself to write an Underwater Navigation course for my agency. It is still under review with other new courses but I am allowed to teach it now. Any instructor who asks for guidance with a nav course will get the materials as I wrote them.

The problem I see with UW Nav and why some have such difficulty with it goes back to OW training. I put more than required in my course with Nav. Not alot but more than set a heading and follow it out to the marker, platform, etc. I also make it clear that even as a new diver, trusting a DM or guide to take you where you want to go and get you back is not the ideal way to dive. You still should be watching for landmarks, taking a compass heading, noting depths, and times. If you're not doing this you are only adding to the risk factor should something happen to the guide or you get seperated. You don't need to be an expert all at once. But it is so easy to just note the direction you started out on, the depth of the site, how long you've been swimming, and how much air you used. All of this is valuable info to get back to where you started. Not doing it is just plain laziness.

If you really have issues with it, make it a priority to work on this skill every dive or get more training with a good instructor and then work on it on every dive.

 

[stefo2]

I find using a compass is one of the things that you "forget" unless you do it regularly. Every time I hold one again (be it on a dive or on land) it takes me a good while to work it out again.
I'm not bad at natural navigation, usually have a fair idea of where I am and while I have got a little lost and came up to get my bearings, I have never been completely surprised at where I came up.

Most of my diving has been done on fairly easy to navigate sites, though, with realively clear depth contours.

 

[300bar]

Any instructor who asks for guidance with a nav course will get the materials as I wrote them.

Allway's willing to learn more,so I would be interested to see.

 

[paddler3d]

I've always found that my navigation skills were spot on and solid, even before the Army. In the Army I had a job were navigation was my job.

I've found that there are really two form of navigation. As someone mentioned prior, there is terrain association (natural navigation) and there is mechanical navigation (compass).

I've also found that people either have a natural intuitive ability to know where they are or they don't.

I've found that a lot of folks can navigate using the terrain, okay. However compass skills seem to throw folks for a loop. I don't think that it isn't because enough time is not spent on teaching compass skills in OW, I think it is because OW is the first time a lot of folks pick up a compass.

I've learned that I like to get lost. Sounds weird. I haven't done it successfully yet, or I would be here now. It allows me to relax and enjoy the dive, or frankly what ever I'm doing.

What I've found works awesome for getting better at UW Nav is going to a quarry where the vis is poor and having to navigate 3 dimensionally from various suspended swim platforms to others. With the fact that the vis is poor, you have to maintain direction and depth awareness, and you cannot terrain associate, one can really improve ones navigation skills.