Compass
I use a compass and I practice with it regularly. I find that a compass and map connects me to the land while a GPS removes me by making the process too simple. Making the interpretations between the paper and the landforms increases your awareness in the surroundings.
If you want to learn to navigate, you need to use tools that require you to navigate. If you want to go where you are told to go, get a gps - it’s not navigation…it’s following directions.
In my research days in the field I occasionally run into geocachers. I have yet to meet one that was remotely aware of the natural surroundings. Just following the little arrow on the gadget…
However, I do carry a gps in case I want to get a pinpoint location on something for my archaeologist friends.
Brunton compass and topos
I don’t use GPS, prefer to stick with a Brunton sighting compass and topo maps. But then I minored in Geology and did some surveying and cartography so that has always been my preferred method of orienting myself to my location and navigating through it. In the mountainous, stream cut areas that I traverse, GPS has limited value since it doesn’t recognize cliffs and ravines. And I can usually pinpoint my location by correlating the map to observable topography. And the compass doesn’t need batteries and doesn’t care if it gets wet.
Both
I have yet to have the batteries fail on my compass.
I carry several compasses. One is kept in my survival pocket in my PFD, another in my fanny pack. My wife has one.
The GPS is more toy and fun gadget than necessary tool. Although I use it to navigate it is merely an easy ‘cheat’, not essential.
Compass
But I don’t use it much since I moved to California, where the standard operating procedure is turn left and follow the coast.
Both… But only use the GPS…
10% of the time. Usually I only use it Geocaching, but also use it to mark my insertion point if I am going hiking. A GPS is useless on a river, cause you are going in one direction from A to B… Therefor there is no need. Learn to use a compass & then use a GPS1 Electronics fail all the time.
Paddle easy,
Coffee
For me it is
primary GPS
secondary compass and chart.
two gps and one compass
If the first gps fails I would get out the second gps. After that I’d just use my chart by itself unless I needed the compass for something.
Or?
I don’t think it’s an “or” issue. The question should be: do you bring a GPS in addition to a compass & map/chart?
Using just a compass is more sporting.
One of the functions of a compass
is to get a fix triangulating off known objects.
How do you do that in featureless terrain where the shoreline looks all alike? Yes you can tell direction but how do you pinpoint yourself on a chart?
How many are handy with a sextant? Not me!
And compass on deck
Forgot to mention that above. You achieve similar results with a compass in your hand, but it is so much easier to have one on the deck…
can be fun and useful
A hill, transmission tower, point, island all make fine points to triangulate. Still I mostly use my compass (deck in this case) just to keep me in the right direction when I already know the heading I need based on knowing where I started and where I want to go like from some point on an island to some point on the mainland. When just going along a simple coastline then a compass is mostly only needed for pea soup fog.
We don’t have
water big enough around here to need GPS or compass. However, on land I prefer the compass for reasons already stated, not electronic and it makes you observe your surroundings. I have navigated heavy timber, where no landmarks are available to triangulate, with compass and altimeter. With a good 7 1/2 minute map you can follow contours with an altimeter and hardly even need the compass. That said, the altimeter is battery operated. I can also sight landmarks and judge altitude with my compass as it is a pocket transit with levels and inclinometer.
If . . .
If there is a long, featureless beach, with no nav marks, no spires or chimneys marked on the chart, no hills inland, and no offshore islands, then you can’t get a fix with a compass. That’s where dead reckoning is useful. Another essential skill that probably far too few sea kayakers have and practice.
And, of course, in order to use dead reckoning to reach your destination, you’re going to need that compass.
For the low cost, and inherent reliability of a compass, I just can’t see why any mariner would question whether one is worth having and using.
Yes a GPS is useful. So is a compass. Carry both, ideally, but if I can only have one, I’ll absolutely choose a compass every time.
I love the battery can fail so don’t use
a GPS argument. I guess those people that worry about batteries going dead don’t use a car, cell phone, mp3 player, etc, etc. because the battery can fail.
I use both depending on the situation but mostly rely on a GPS since I have a 1:24k maps for the four states close to home stored in my GPS. Also, I can use Google Earth to plan my trips and upload the routes etc. into my GPS.
A GPS is useful on rivers when you want to find specific locations along the river, for example, the Green River in Utah where there are many Indian ruins located in the canyons. The first time I did the trip I missed a lot of them because I wasn’t exactly sure where on the river I was and the current makes paddling upriver a chore.
A compass can lead you astray if you don’t set the declination correctly. Also, I’ve been in places where a unseen magnetic mass gave me a significant error. How many people can count steps around an obstacle? Can you walk a course in a direction for a given distance and end up close to where you should be?
Anyhow, a good compass isn’t very expensive and will last you forever so why not have one and learn how to use it.
That’s not the argument
At least I didn’t see it in this thread, just that not being able to back up to a compass and chart (or map) is a bad idea IF they fail. And reliance on a GPS often takes away from chart skills - I’ve been in classes where we saw exactly that. And, BTW, I got done plotting the course faster than the guy with the computer and GPS anyway.
There’s also a diff in battery life depending on where you use a device. My cell phone doesn’t have to spend the bulk of its life in an environment that is at least chilly, which is very much the case for the GPS even in a dry bag because of where we most use it. The batteries go down much faster when it is on my deck than when it is stored in the day hatch. But even in the day hatch, on the cooler waters of Maine the temperature takes them down faster. That environment is quite different from my cell phone which spends most of its day inside or in a heated car, often on a car charger.
The waterproof camera battery goes down faster in the cold as well, but I can decide to take most of my shots before the cold kills the battery if I don’t want to mess with reloading. Being unable to take shots if a bank of pea soup fog comes in is not a safety risk.
If hand held marine GPS’s typically had the same options as the camera or the cell phone, with an easily swapped out single battery (not lots of AA’s to fuss with), and car chargers so that you could refresh them on the drive back home, it might be more tempting to beat them up in the same way. But in my experience thus far, it is fairly annoying to keep a GPS happy in terms of power supply on the water areas where we most may need the thing for an emergency.
We Road Bikers
I come from a road bike background. I have always had a bike computer on the bikes. When I started kayaking I missed knowing my current speed, average speed, trip odometer, etc. I bought a GPS and got all that info on the water… along with all the navigation functions. If you’re used to using a bike computer GPS will make you feel more at home on the water.
How much is this wind or current affecting me? GPS tells you exactly how much. No guesswork.
Compass doesn’t commit suicide…
when immersed in water, even salt water. The marine compass needs no care after being in the water. Even with a hiker’s compass’s capsule dial, I just rinse with fresh water later and it keeps working perfectly. A lanyard keeps it secured in my PFD pocket while paddling, nice and small and lightweight.
Don’t need it around here (for paddling) but I’ve used it elsewhere and like having a skill that expands my hiking options. I also enjoy now being able to identify peaks that I used to think, “Wish I knew what that was.”
There were 2 GPS units among four of us paddlers on a month-long kayaking trip. The percentage of days when both units were working was fairly low, and some days neither one worked. I was not impressed.
While they aren’t mutually exclusive, I like to keep things simple, equipment-wise. Hence the choice to learn to use a compass. It turned out to be more fun than I expected, certainly more fun than studying model-specific manuals explaining which menus access which functions. With compasses, you can pick up other models and know how to use them without studying an owner’s manual or doing any programming.
There is also some allure to learning a skill that is very, very old yet still applies today. Maybe nav by sextant next? (Probably not.)
Comparing GPS failure with user failures
1. You said, “A compass can lead you astray if you don’t set the declination correctly.”
Adjusting for declination/variation is a basic and essential part of navigating with map/chart and compass. If you get it wrong, that is user error, not equipment error. (You could also install GPS batteries incorrectly, or delete information recorded, etc.–same problem: user error.)
2. You said “How many people can count steps around an obstacle? Can you walk a course in a direction for a given distance and end up close to where you should be?”
Again, this is a basic skill that is described in books and easy to practice. For paddling, the more applicable exercises would be on the water, but the same principle applies: PRACTICE AND IMPROVE.
3. You said “Also, I’ve been in places where a unseen magnetic mass gave me a significant error.”
This could be a problem, but a GPS will also malfunction or not function if it doesn’t have satellites accessible. Either way, there are things to watch out for with specific technologies, so learn what they are and how to deal with them. This would be a good reason to have both compass and GPS (and the skills to use them), if you anticipate that these issues would actually pose a problem. I’ve never encountered a magnetic item that kept me from using the compass but I have had several incidences when a GPS could not supply nav info at all due to being in canyons.
I’m surprised that GPS units still have so much trouble with battery consumption. The one we have at home is at least 9 yrs old; I would’ve thought things had improved since then.
batteries not much of a problem
if on a longer trip and I don’t want to take too many batteries I just turn it on now an then to get a location fix but not record my entire path (which is the fun part to me). My Garmin unit gets about 30hrs on 2 AAs. The bigger reliability issue for me has been if I let it get banged around in surf though I’ve pretty much learned to stow safe for those times now.
I think it’s possible especially with a backup GPS unit to rely on the GPS, but a map and compass is so darn easy to bring anyway, the skills help you avoid over trusting the GPS and the skills don’t weigh anything to carry ;). And if crossing in low viz I sure want my deck compass GPS or not.
NEVER trust a GPS
They have their uses but they are an addition only.
Nothing beats a compass and a good map. These force you to think.
I got lost in the desert because the LT trusted his GPS so much he left his compass at base-camp.
Then he lost the map.
Then the GPS died!
Then we met people with beter guns who did not like American Soldiers on their land!
I’ve seen too many people get lost trusting a GPS, especially the mapping GPS.
They have their uses, but I never trust or put my life in them.