In the quirky section of the news was this story about a sailor going in circles around the Isle of Sheppey. It seems he was trying to travel from Medway to Southampton by following the coast of England and keeping the coast to his right, and with no navigational equipment. He ended up doing laps around the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary until his fuel ran out and he had to be rescued.
After I had finished chuckling over the news, I wondered about the geography of the incident. How could he not have realised that he was circling an island? How did he enter the loop in the first place? If you look up Sheppey in Wikipedia and look at a map you will see that it's a 97 sq km island separated from the main island of Britain by a narrow channel on the Thames estuary side. So it would have been obvious going out that it is a channel not to be entered. Or perhaps, the channel entrance was not visible. However on the other end of the channel near Whitstable, the channel opens up broadly to sea. So it was not obvious to him that he was entering the channel.
He would have passed under A249 bridge though and it should have been obvious on the second round that he was going in circles. Or even before then, when passing Sheerness for the second time.
Incidentally I recognised the name Sheerness. It's where the ferry from the Vlissingen on the Hook of Holland deposited me the first time I visited the UK. Obviously this was in the days before the Chunnel. Wikipedia shows that there is no such service now.
1 comment:
As you say, the channel near Whitstable is very wide, not immediately obvious what to do.
Navigation without signs is very different to driving.
There's also a lot of human factors he would have had to guard against - e.g. confirmation bias. You can't just stop and ask the way, although near the bridge he might have been able to.
Very easy to make these kinds of mistakes. People get lost in the bush walking around in circles all the time.
GPS's very handy.
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