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> you can call emergency services to your precise location. I guess this is the first time it's occurred to me that hikers and backpackers and such carry them

> you can call emergency services to your precise location. I guess this is the first time it's occurred to me that hikers and backpackers and such carry them too, which is odd because I hike and backpack. I picked up the InReach after finding myself 200 miles offshore in a sailboat without an engine or battery power (which meant no VHF or electronic navigation equipment or autopilot or even red/green lights for others to see us at night) nor any way to make power I assume the 406 Mhz beacon has a range of a few miles?

0_____0 3y ago
406MHz I think is referencing PLBs and EPIRBs, which I'm guessing you're familiar with from sailing. The power is high enough that satellites can be used to get gross location, with radio direction finding being used by rescue party
- bmelton 3y ago
  AHA! Yes, thank you. Other than the compass (which was only visible in the day time) the EPIRB was the only piece of equipment we assumed to work on the aforementioned voyage. We of course didn't test it as we were able to make it back safely, but I should probably learn more about how it functions.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    with no propulsion, I'm assuming you were just drifting and not really doing to much navigation. just curious if you tried any celestial navigation at night to attempt any sense of direction?
    - plugin-baby 3y ago
      if there was wind they may have been sailing.
      - bmelton 3y ago
        It was an old race boat, we had ample wind, and the owner casually bragged that he'd replaced the sails with ones that were "about 30% too big for the boat." We were sailing like demons. One of my biggest regrets of the trip was that we didn't have any wind or speed instrumentation to let us know how fast we were going, but it felt extremely fast.
    - bmelton 3y ago
      Yeah. We mostly just picked out a set of stars and kept them roughly to position. Every so often we'd try to illuminate the fixed compass with a phone to ensure that we hadn't wildly drifted from our expected bearing (also, stars move over the course of the night and I have no idea how much)
  - nullfield 3y ago
    I’m surprised that things like US military-style tritium-illuminated compasses aren’t more popular or widely used for cases like this. They’re very safe, last something like 10 years, and aren’t really expensive (compared to “I need to know what direction I’m going and have no way to do so, or can’t see it”).
    - bmelton 3y ago
      It would have been a delightful addition and honestly would have kept us much safer. It was fairly easy to keep Orion's belt just port of the mast, but occasionally cloud cover or weather would make that more difficult.
sgtnoodle 3y ago
Re: range, it's still satallite based. It's purely for emergencies, though, rather than for convenience.
- bmelton 3y ago
  Thank you
runlevel1 3y ago
That sounds like a hell of a story. How did you find yourself in that situation? And how did you get out of it?
- reaperman 3y ago
  If it were me, I’d assume backup paper navigation charts and either a handheld battery powered backup GPS or my smartphone that has an app to parse data from the GPS chip. Could use primarily dead reckoning plus turn the phone on every couple hours to update true location. Most sailors are using paper charts for tricky sections anyways — you just normally have a constant GPS location provided by your navigation system. There are also lots of established shipping lanes you could find that would be relatively densely traveled and give you periodic feedback for which direction to go. A bit more dangerous due to collisions without lights but as long as your retroreflector is hoisted, big ships should see you clearly on radar. plus you’ll generally be swapping sleep shifts and always have someone manning the helm on the sailboat, though seeing large vessels at night can be somewhat more difficult.
  - bmelton 3y ago
    Mostly all that's right. We had three phones and a few battery packs (tho we'd exhausted them more quickly than expected and lost one to rain) because the paper charts aboard were from the late 80s when the boat was built and were all for the Pacific ocean it was built to sail. The only other complicating factor was that due to the August Florida heat, nobody really had the luxury of sleep for the first couple of days.
  - closewith 3y ago
    > Most sailors are using paper charts for tricky sections anyways — you just normally have a constant GPS location provided by your navigation system. My experience in Marine SAR is that this is no longer true. Apps like Navionics, SeaPilot, etc - often without any backup at all - are by far the most common form of navigation.
    - bmelton 3y ago

0_____0 3y ago

406MHz I think is referencing PLBs and EPIRBs, which I'm guessing you're familiar with from sailing. The power is high enough that satellites can be used to get gross location, with radio direction finding being used by rescue party

bmelton 3y ago
AHA! Yes, thank you. Other than the compass (which was only visible in the day time) the EPIRB was the only piece of equipment we assumed to work on the aforementioned voyage. We of course didn't test it as we were able to make it back safely, but I should probably learn more about how it functions.
- dylan604 3y ago
  with no propulsion, I'm assuming you were just drifting and not really doing to much navigation. just curious if you tried any celestial navigation at night to attempt any sense of direction?
  - plugin-baby 3y ago
    if there was wind they may have been sailing.
    - bmelton 3y ago
      It was an old race boat, we had ample wind, and the owner casually bragged that he'd replaced the sails with ones that were "about 30% too big for the boat." We were sailing like demons. One of my biggest regrets of the trip was that we didn't have any wind or speed instrumentation to let us know how fast we were going, but it felt extremely fast.
  - bmelton 3y ago
    Yeah. We mostly just picked out a set of stars and kept them roughly to position. Every so often we'd try to illuminate the fixed compass with a phone to ensure that we hadn't wildly drifted from our expected bearing (also, stars move over the course of the night and I have no idea how much)
- nullfield 3y ago
  I’m surprised that things like US military-style tritium-illuminated compasses aren’t more popular or widely used for cases like this. They’re very safe, last something like 10 years, and aren’t really expensive (compared to “I need to know what direction I’m going and have no way to do so, or can’t see it”).
  - bmelton 3y ago
    It would have been a delightful addition and honestly would have kept us much safer. It was fairly easy to keep Orion's belt just port of the mast, but occasionally cloud cover or weather would make that more difficult.

sgtnoodle 3y ago

Re: range, it's still satallite based. It's purely for emergencies, though, rather than for convenience.

bmelton 3y ago
Thank you

runlevel1 3y ago

That sounds like a hell of a story. How did you find yourself in that situation? And how did you get out of it?

reaperman 3y ago
If it were me, I’d assume backup paper navigation charts and either a handheld battery powered backup GPS or my smartphone that has an app to parse data from the GPS chip. Could use primarily dead reckoning plus turn the phone on every couple hours to update true location. Most sailors are using paper charts for tricky sections anyways — you just normally have a constant GPS location provided by your navigation system. There are also lots of established shipping lanes you could find that would be relatively densely traveled and give you periodic feedback for which direction to go. A bit more dangerous due to collisions without lights but as long as your retroreflector is hoisted, big ships should see you clearly on radar. plus you’ll generally be swapping sleep shifts and always have someone manning the helm on the sailboat, though seeing large vessels at night can be somewhat more difficult.
- bmelton 3y ago
  Mostly all that's right. We had three phones and a few battery packs (tho we'd exhausted them more quickly than expected and lost one to rain) because the paper charts aboard were from the late 80s when the boat was built and were all for the Pacific ocean it was built to sail. The only other complicating factor was that due to the August Florida heat, nobody really had the luxury of sleep for the first couple of days.
- closewith 3y ago
  > Most sailors are using paper charts for tricky sections anyways — you just normally have a constant GPS location provided by your navigation system. My experience in Marine SAR is that this is no longer true. Apps like Navionics, SeaPilot, etc - often without any backup at all - are by far the most common form of navigation.
  - bmelton 3y ago