4 ms·

Just being able to know which way is "north" is probably sufficient.

• jcranmer 4y ago
  There's a difference between geographic north and magnetic north that can get pretty significant (if you live in NE US, magnetic north about 10-20° west of north). If you're sailing the clipper route, for part of your journey, your magnetic compass now points as far as northwest rather than north.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    Hiking in the northeast US, you're generally speaking on trails. I'd certainly encourage people to acquaint themselves with magnetic deviation and so forth. But, especially as a backup mechanism, the main value of a compass is to avoid having absolutely no idea what direction you're going.
    • jcranmer 4y ago
      In my recent hiking experience, a lot of trails in the NE--even in popular parks--are pretty poorly marked, and these days, virtually every hiking trip involves at least one point where the trail makes a sharp curve, but there's something that looks trail-ish that continues ahead, and it's only a few hundred feet down the line that you realize you might have missed the trail. The little handheld trail GPS my parents got me after my first such misadventure has proven incredibly useful for figuring out where I made the wrong move. (The first such misadventure, I was using the paper map to work out if there was a bend I missed).
  • asdff 4y ago
    A paper map of the given area will tell you what declination to set on your compass