Lost at Sea

[Harmsway!]

One of the mega mods for SH5 has a sub mod I enjoy a lot known as Real Navigation. It removes the sub indicator from the chart so you have to use some skills to get where your going. At anytime when the weather is clear you can call upon your navigator to blot a plot on the chart. I like this since I don't have to play everyone on crew or have a continuous dot showing where I'm at.

Now I'm playing the US side in a fleet sub with SH4. So I decided to remove the sub dot from the chart. Hey RSRD sent me up to the Aleutian Islands and I haven't seen a soul outside of my mangy crew for weeks. I'm bored.

Anyway with no sub indicator maneuvering around the islands is a challenge. I use dead reckoning to make my way. Once in a while I'll call on my navigator to mark where we are. I do this by using the waypoint marker. I no longer use way points since that defeats the purpose of self navigating. But I pretend that the waypoint is my navigator so I can find where to X and time stamp my current position then removing the waypoint.

Things went well until the storm hit. For days on end it didn't let up. The thing is I shouldn't use my pretend navigator under cloud cover. So I can only guess where I'm at. Using my skills I know I should be coming close to the next island but fog and rain keep it hidden until I'm right upon it.

Lost at sea. This is where you use everything at your disposal. I know I am no where close if there are no birds. Once I hear and spot birds land is out there somewhere. Usually withing five or ten miles. Then I start taken soundings. Between dead reckoning, my watch, birds, soundings and charts I find my way through the fog and rain.

Now if only another ship would show up on sonar.