# Exceptional Navigator required....



## Jim Harris (Mar 16, 2008)

If you were sailing from Belem to Macapa on a half laden
freighter of around 4500gt. ....

Would you continue up the River Para and negotiate the
tributaries, or return to the Atlantic and re-enter by the
northern reaches?

[The Amazon level is average, but the river Pilot, Master
and 1/O have all fallen overboard and been gobbled up
by piranhas, so the decision is entirely yours?]


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## Santos (Mar 16, 2005)

Continue up the River Para and negotiate the
tributaries. Much quicker.

Chris.


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## pete (Mar 13, 2005)

So I am the 2/O and as such am now in command. Shoot!!!! Remembering I have a Crew of say 30, A cargo worth say £250.000 and a ship worth Lord knows what, I would go for the Longer but safer route.

Oddly enough I found myself in a similar position after the Master fell down the hatch between New Plymouth and Mackay. Clearer Waters I agree but I was sailing as Mate with a Mate's Ticket. Got there in one piece but my backside was twitching...........................pete (Thumb)


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## duquesa (Aug 31, 2006)

*Exceptional Navigator*

Did that tributary passage many time years ago and it wasn't easy then. Things are bound to have improved with the advent of Amazon Cruises. I would be tempted to stick to the delta channels but I'd probably end up on the putty. I'm very glad I'll never have to make the decision.


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## John Williams 56-65 (Feb 12, 2008)

This talk of which way you would approach your destination I find to be rather interesting. I first became interested because of the routes taken by the Lufftwaffe during the war when they came over to bomb various of our cities. As a child during the war I always imagined the German bombers took off from their bases in Germany and flew across the North Sea then crossed the English coast in the region of Hull,and continued across country to Merseyside. At least that would have been true according to my atlas. I could not have been more wrong. It was many years later that a report appeared in the local paper[Birkenhead News] telling of a German pilot who had taken part in the bombing of Merseyside and was now revisitting the scenes of his wartime escapades, but this time as a tourist. He said that he took off from an airfield near Paris, then crossed over the western approaches and round Lands End and up the Irish Sea. As Ireland was neutral during the war Dublin was all lit up [no blackout] This gave them an excellent fix for their run in to the Mersey. Simply head almost exactly due east for a hundred miles or so and they were overhead and doing their stuff almost completely undetected. Another route they took was from the south of Norway and over the more remote parts of Scotland, again almost completely undetected. Obviously they had it much easier than RAF Bomber Command who didn`t have the luxury of being able to fly anywhere in Europe undetected as it was all German occupied territory and they were being tracked all the way to and from their targets. 
There was one other thing that surprised me and that was when the RAF was ordered to bomb the oil installations in south east Europe. This was a very unpopular mission because as as well as being fully laden with bombs they had to carry a full load of fuel for the flight. Even then they didn`t have enough fuel for the return journey so they had to carry on and land in North African RAF bases. After a few days rest they then did it all over again in reverse.
As I am talking of air routes I was somewhat taken aback a few years ago at the time of the Lockerby air disaster. As I sat watching the television news at the time, I wondered what a plane bound for Los Angeles was doing over Scotland. It took a while for me to realise it was following a Great Circle route which took it north to Scotland crossing the coast to the west of Glasgow and then to Iceland and over Greenland and across Hudsons Bay and Canada before heading down to LA. A route I followed myself many years later when I flew to Calgary in Canada to visit my sister.
Fascinating stuff this navigation!


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