The Salty Barrister

I once was alone on a small boat bobbing up and down an oily sea. I recall the usual suspects being there: chunk of water against hull, clank of something shifting, and the wind's low hiss. There wasn't a shoreline to steer by, and no distant running lights to follow. All I had was a compass, a working engine and a memory of how long I'd been motoring.

I got myself home. Admittedly, no stunning feat. But you see, what it shows in some very small way is that plunking around the ocean's waters is a doable endeavor. With the navigational rudiments in hand, you can pretty much move from port to port without the benefit of electronic circuitry. There's no debating that point.

So let's wrap up this Loran-C debate and, specifically, respond to the comment someone left in response to my January 18, 2010 entry. I'm always grateful for comments, but that comment misses the windward mark. First, it accused the entry's premise of "self-sufficiency" as being somehow contradictory to my challenge that Loran-C should be maintained. Really? You can define self-sufficiency across the spectrum, but I clearly define it as being all about redundancy and about not waiting for someone else to save your transom. When I talked about radar, depth gauges, and battery banks I was conceding a personal reliance on modern-day amenities in achieving "self-sufficiency". So, friend, keeping the only redundant back-up to the GPS alive and kicking fits squarely with how I defined "self-sufficiency." Second, your rhetorical query as to why the United States "should shoulder most of the cost of an aging and redundant system" left me scratching my scalp with a dopey look. Why? 'Cause what in sweet Jesus are we supposed to do when the GPS signal craps out? Or how about when the military pulls it off-line (temporarily, of course) due to the specter of a national security threat? Sure, we can putter back to port with the tried and true, but how's that home heating oil barge going to get tugged around in all manner of weather? How's that fast-ferry with a load of suits going to make its Wall Street run at an average speed in excess of twenty-five knots. The bottom line here is not whether you can make a port, it's about a transportation system that's dependant on a fragile (and easily tampered-with) electronic beacon.

Finally, you dredge up the ol' market loving theory.  Let the market support the Loran-C, you say. God love us, I'm sorely tired of that argument and I've got a novel's worth of rebuttal for blind reliance on market forces. Still, I'll bet we can both agree that one of government's primary functions is to keep us safe. Assuming as much, and assuming that when the GPS stops warbling marine transportation is going to enter a severe and dangerous paradigm shift, I'd say you'll have to agree that Loran-C maintenance should be a government function.

Ok, so I'm standing my mud. Don't take offense, none.

Underway and making way (with a dumbed-out Loran-C).

--- JKF

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I grew up around folks that tended toward self-sufficiency. A spare something was generally on hand. You didn't come into the dock too hot because rudders and clutches could be ornery. You checked the depth gauge against your plotted position to make sure things looked about the same. You didn't run your fuel tanks down, rely on a radar, or run off your entire battery bank. You get the drill, and that approach has faired me well. So what with the wisdom of my increasing years, I'm damn unhappy about the Loran-C system being unplugged. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-navigation-system-shelved,0,939770.story)

We're all GPS happy, intoxicated by its ease, accuracy and relatively cheap price tag. I get it. The problem with GPS is that it relies on satellites and, look, I'm no engineer but if a satellite works anything like my cell phone, you can probably shut them off with as little as a key stroke. That's the problem. Everyone from the commercial fisherman to the weekend warrior is bombing around the coast on the wings of a GPS signal. Cut that signal and my money says you're going to have big problems. Ferries, harbor patrol units, and, I'd venture, even the Coast Guard might be up a creek. And without Loran-C what's the alternative? Dead reckoning? Maybe like sailors of old, you can pull up your sounding weight to see what kind of sea floor the wax base trapped. (I can assure you that that aged talent of being able to divine one's location from a sample of the sea floor has slipped into history's ether.)

Reports suggest that turning off Loran-C will cost some 256 jobs. The price of keeping Loran-C going is reported to be $36 million in 2010 and $190 million for the next five years. (Serious money to be sure, but let’s not venture down the path of comparing it to the alleged bonuses the financial sector is taking home. And, in case you'd forgotten but by way of perspective, the TARP bailout is in the range of $700 billion!)

Yea, I am angry. These are the easy decisions and we're not getting them right. Tell you what, China is. They have two Loran-C type systems. Makes you wonder what we're thinking, huh? If you have a moment, give your local representative a call or go to http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/LORAN/default.htm and send them a burst of the kind of common sense that landed a thousand ships safely back in the harbor.

Underway and making way (without my Loran-C).

--- JKF

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