With GPS systems and other geographical technology being as sophisticated as it now is, do lighthouses still serve an integral purpose? Are they more now just in case the captain/crew lapses on the monitoring of navigation systems? Obviously lighthouses are more immediate and I guess tangible, but do they still fulfil a purpose beyond mitigating basic human error?
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Never rely on the thing with electronics to be your only means of figuring out where you are.
Never rely on the thing with electronics to be your only means of figuring out where you are.
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Boats and ships still hit rocks.. with lighthouses.
More boats and ships would probably hit rocks without lighthouses.
I have a friend who is a captain with the Canadian coat Guard. He says that they are experimenting with virtual light buouys and lighthouses. Channel markers and such. Most if not all large vessels have computer navigation with so much redundancy that the lights aren’t needed. Part of his job is servicing the lights. Virtual ones will save a ton of money. Inshore small vessels still use them of course but less and less. My brother in law is a urchin diver. He has a small boat that spends a lot of time very close to shore but even he navigates with his laptop.
Light houses are some of the most useful aids to navigation. They blink a certain pattern so you can tell what light house you are looking at. The major advantage is range. They are built high and bright so you can see them from miles. While something like a bouy you can’t see it, and especially read it until you are darn near hitting the thing.
As for why? To verify your location. GPS is great until it’s not there, or it’s wrong. It does go down sometimes too. I was co-pilot in a private plane once and the GPS system just disappeared. We were flying IFR so had to switch to VFR and other instruments for navigation. Later we find out it was a military drill.
You can’t just follow a GPS you always need to be tracking your position with as many tools as you have available. Things go wrong and you need to be prepared to deal with it.
It’s an excellent safety measure – a second data point, a way to calibrate and verify whatever you’re using to navigate.
If you see a lighthouse you weren’t expecting, or Don’t see one you were expecting, that’s your warning that something is wrong and you might not be where you think you are. …and it tells you this from line of sight, without crashing into anything, or getting lost at sea.
If you see the lighthouse where it’s supposed to be, that tells you your other systems have worked well enough to get you to the lighthouse, and you can use your location and direction compared to it to navigate from there.
Look up the coastline of Maine on a map. There’s a reason Maine and New England are known for lighthouses. There are a lot of islands and the underwater topography is chaotic. Lighthouses serve a very needed function.
Light houses are some of the most useful aids to navigation. They blink a certain pattern so you can tell what light house you are looking at. The major advantage is range. They are built high and bright so you can see them from miles. While something like a bouy you can’t see it, and especially read it until you are darn near hitting the thing.
As for why? To verify your location. GPS is great until it’s not there, or it’s wrong. It does go down sometimes too. I was co-pilot in a private plane once and the GPS system just disappeared. We were flying IFR so had to switch to VFR and other instruments for navigation. Later we find out it was a military drill.
You can’t just follow a GPS you always need to be tracking your position with as many tools as you have available. Things go wrong and you need to be prepared to deal with it.
It’s an excellent safety measure – a second data point, a way to calibrate and verify whatever you’re using to navigate.
If you see a lighthouse you weren’t expecting, or Don’t see one you were expecting, that’s your warning that something is wrong and you might not be where you think you are. …and it tells you this from line of sight, without crashing into anything, or getting lost at sea.
If you see the lighthouse where it’s supposed to be, that tells you your other systems have worked well enough to get you to the lighthouse, and you can use your location and direction compared to it to navigate from there.
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