Your hearing better be good if you're going to throw broccoli

Point Retreat Lighthouse

Years ago a foggy day always brought out a reiteration of the theory of potato navigation.  It is for those days when you can barely see the bow of the boat, let alone any geography in front of you, from the wheelhouse.

That's when you send someone up to the bow with a sack of potatoes. At intervals of every few minutes, he throws one ahead.  When one doesn't splash, it's time to turn.

Here's when that is called for.  Years ago on another sailboat and not too far from where we are now, we were passing a place called Bell Island in a heavy fog.  The bell sounds as a warning to navigators that they are near a large pile of rocks. We could hear the bell but could not see the island.  The skipper decided he wanted a visual on it so we started inching toward the sound. In time we heard the low hum of the island's generator. Then we heard two men talking in normal voices and still could not see the island.  Now, that's too close. The potato would not have splashed.  We turned having no idea how close we came to the island. Later the same morning we came upon the cork line floating at the top of a commercial fisherman's net. The fog remained so thick we could not see the the boat that had to be on one end of it.  We turned and followed the net and in a short time we came to the boat.  That's how thick fog can get, and what brings up the idea of potato navigation.

As we left the harbor yesterday, we could see a bank of fog ahead of us. As we sat in the cockpit looking at it, I asked Mike if we had any potatoes. He knew immediately what I was talking about and returned that he never had potatoes on the boat.

"Well what have we got to throw?"

The only thing that came to mind was the broccoli we had brought along, some of which had huge crowns.  

Compared with a potato, broccoli was not going to make much of a splash and that's what brought the quality of hearing into the conversation.

Fortunately by the time we reached the area where the fog was, it had lifted and the broccoli survived until dinner time.