Sunday, August 30th, 2009. Pace count.
I have spent a busy month of August under the spell of night navigation paddles. On the other side, my wilderness medicine studies have progressed to a point where I should be able to efficiently euthanize a pack llama while stabilizing injured expedition members or if stuporous by hypothermia, the other way around.
The latest complication in my paddling endeavours has been extending dead reckoning skills by practicing pacing to keep track of the distances paddled. It goes like this: One pace is defined as two paddle strokes. Ideally, you should pace the distance several times and record the number of strokes it takes to advance 100 metres or let us say, a cable. This estimation is fabulously difficult as after a few strokes, my mind usually wanders leisurely and I loose trace of any count. However, I have determined that it takes me 18 paces and a half (37 strokes) to paddle 100 metres, while a cable usually asks for 34 paces.
My advice is that after each set one should not even try to remember the count. Routes with several legs require continuous pacing and with all the dead reckoning formulas, it is very likely that the count will be lost.
To keep a record of the legs, I have been using a beaded pace counter which is a simple braided parachute cord with two sets of 9 and 4 beads. The counter is used like an abacus. After pacing off 100 meters, the first bead from the line of nine should be pulled down. This continues until all nine beads are down when 900 meters have been paddled. After the next 100 meters a bead from the line with four is pulled down, and the other set of nine beads reset which marks 1 kilometer. When all the beads are pulled down at 4900 meters pace off another 100 meters, pull all the beads up to mark 5 kilometers, and start again.
There are of course, certain conditions such as head, tail and beam winds, swell, streams, mist and night that affect the pace count in the sea, and only through experience allowances can be made for them.
I do not complain. At this level, navigation in land would ask to smell the feces of beasts and to lick ash from bonfires.
[Ignacio Wenley Palacios]
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