Distance to run made simple

David Smith is an RYA Yachtmaster and skippers for the Disabled Sailing Association. He and his wife sail a Pan Oceanic 38

There has been much said of the roles of traditional and electronic navigation techniques in recent years. For my own part I consider GPS chart plotters to be the tool to tell you where you are and where you are heading, and paper charts, along with almanacs and tidal stream atlases, are the essential tools for planning. Having spent much of my life learning navigation, not only at sea but on land and in the air, I thought I had everything needed in my navigational toolbox. However, last year I added something new.

In May my wife Sarah and I began a 2,142-mile cruise from Devon to Scotland, returning in September. We sailed aboard , our Pan Oceanic 38, a cutter-rigged sloop with a pilot house and eminently suited for such a voyage. An old