Course Corrections — Part 1: When the Chart is Wrong

Sailing a small boat in the middle of the ocean comes about as close to spending time in the International Space Station that normal earthbound citizens can pull off. Once you are a few hundred miles offshore, no Coast Guard cutter or helicopter or commercial shipping can reach you if you run into trouble. You must be totally self-reliant and resourceful and stocked with the right gear to handle any emergency… I loved this aspect of our voyage, and it is why off-trail backpacking appeals to me so strongly these days now that we don’t own a boat. (Although given sea-level rise, and the fact that our front door is 11 feet above sea level, I do wish we’d hung onto our dinghy… but that’s a story for another day!)

Under sail

No matter how many times we did it, setting off on a multi-day ocean passage always gave us pause. The first almost living, impossibly stolid whoop-de-do of an ocean swell after lying at anchor in a protected harbor reliably provoked a corresponding whoop-de-do of nervous butterflies in our tummies.

Transderm Scop (“the patch”) quelled my seasickness well enough for me to function and make quick trips belowdecks. Unfortunately, scopalamine blurred Ginny’s vision—rendering her unable to read our all-important charts (more on the importance of said charts in a moment)—so she made do with Bonine, staying on deck watching the horizon and eating plain white rice until she could sleep. Vienna and Rhiannon, six and eight when we set off, would each throw up once, then curl up in their “cozy spots” in the cockpit and fall fast asleep.

After a day or so nursing our collective quease, everyone would find their sea legs and life aboard resumed the normal rhythms of a well-found boat making way towards the next adventure.

Landfall and a Dangerous Surprise

We cast off the dock lines in San Diego, our final U.S. port for the foreseeable future, on December 1st, 2002, bound for La Paz in the Sea of Cortez. My parents had come to see us off from the marina, and we waved to them in the setting sun.

We planned to break the long passage with a stop at rarely visited Isla de San Benito, the largest of a clutch of tiny islands just north of Isla Cedros. (The party scene in Turtle Bay didn’t appeal with young kids aboard and we were just a tad too early for the migrating gray whales.) At the usual five-knot average that we used for planning, we expected to make landfall in three and a half days.

At the helm — during the day

Some short-handed crews kept disciplined watch schedules, but Ginny and I played to our strengths: I was a lifelong insomniac, she a solid sleeper. Early in a passage, I often held the graveyard watch into early morning, staying on until I was tired enough to sleep. On the morning of our expected landfall, I watched the sun rise, came below to mark our position in the logbook, and told Ginny—who was getting ready to come on deck—that I could totally understand how exhausted sailors made mistakes. Sometimes serious ones.

With a thousand sea-miles already under our belt, we chatted somewhat smugly about how we would never fall into such a trap.

Then I stuck my head up the companionway.

ROCKS!! I yelled.

We scrambled on deck like characters out of a Loony Tunes cartoon. I frantically disengaged the self-steering, and Ginny tacked hard to port.

We knew that the waters around the San Benitos were guarded by fringing reefs and submerged rocks and had plotted our course to give them a wide berth, but we also knew that the islands were still at least an hour away.

Where the hell were we?? Everything had seemed in order: our compass had been recently serviced, our paper charts were current, we had a GPS feeding an early version of electronic charts, and we had plotted our position hourly. Every source said we were still in deep water miles away from any land or hazards.

I was tired but not hallucinating. Nevertheless, solid and incontrovertible, breaking waves and an island had magically emerged from the morning mist where none should be.

We spent the next hour tacking back and forth, trying to figure out our position. We scanned the shoreline with binoculars, triangulated visible features with our charts, and finally convinced ourselves that yes, this was indeed Isla de San Benito. It was just five miles out of position.

Badly shaken, we picked our way into the small harbor and dropped anchor with huge sighs of relief.

Compass and Chart

The experience in the San Benitos rattled us—not because we had been careless, but because we had done everything right and still nearly ran aground. Our compass was accurate. Our GPS readings were solid. Our plotted positions matched across multiple sources. And yet the islands were not where the chart proclaimed they should be.

In that moment, it became clear: a good compass isn’t enough if the chart is wrong.

That’s more than a sailing lesson. It’s an ethical one.

Get them started young!

A ship’s compass is almost personal. At the helm, it is always in your line of sight. You come to trust it and rely on it. For someone with absolutely no sense of direction like me, it keeps you oriented. It tells you where north is, wherever you are. If you were to put a gun to my head and tell me I had to ditch every piece of navigational gear but one, I would choose the compass.

For the purposes of Leaving a Clean Wake, however, I’d like to draw an analogy between a ship’s compass and one’s moral compass. Think of it as representing personal integrity—the values that guide your choices. But a compass alone can’t tell you where the hazards are. That’s what a chart is for: a shared, external reference built from collective knowledge.

Every mariner, from a single-handed sailor to the captain of the largest super tanker, relies on precisely the same set of charts to safely navigate the vast and varied bodies of water that comprise over 70% of the earth’s surface.

A sailor without a compass is directionless. But a sailor without a reliable chart is in danger. The same holds true for navigating an intentional life aligned with one’s values. Personal virtue is essential—but it’s only part of the picture.

How Charts Evolve

And here’s the key: good charts don’t just appear.

In the Age of Sail, charts were rough, hand-drawn sketches based on individual observations—coastlines traced by eye, hazards marked from memory. Countless shipwrecks and lives lost, surprise landfalls (think of Columbus thinking he’d discovered the Indies), encounters with indigenous wisdom and methods of navigation… Over time, those observations and experiences were pooled, corrected, and refined. If you watched the evolution of nautical charts in time-lapse, it would look like a sped-up version of plate tectonics: continents slowly drifting into their correct shapes and positions as more accurate information came to light. The “here be dragons” warnings and whimsical mermaids and sea serpents that once adorned early maps gave way to precise and densely packed data—currents, buoys, shipping lanes, lighthouse signals, and carefully surveyed depths. Modern nautical charts are masterpieces of information design—highly detailed, yet remarkably legible.

Not surprisingly, creating such charts is a vast undertaking that comprises sonar and lidar surveys, satellite imagery, hydrographic data, and legal conventions. They reflect centuries of refinement, and they’re maintained by institutions with the scale and authority to keep them accurate—national governments, international treaty organizations, and global mapping systems.

A map of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

(The same is true back on land, by the way. USGS topographic maps—used by hikers, backpackers, and search-and-rescue teams—also represent centuries of exploration, survey work, and institutional stewardship. Their accuracy, like their nautical cousins, can be a matter of safety. And just as nautical charts help guide ships through tricky waters, these topo maps amongst other benefits help outdoor travelers minimize impact by following durable routes, avoiding fragile ecosystems, and finding safe terrain. Someone unfamiliar with the Leave No Trace framework might still follow its spirit if they’re using a good chart, an accurate compass, and guided by the ethic of leaving a clean wake.)

When we neared the San Benitos, we weren’t victims of natural chaos or faulty gear. We were navigating with an outdated artifact of institutional dysfunction. Everyone—Mexican port captains, government agencies, insurance companies, publishers, other cruisers, and, belatedly, us—knew the chart was wrong. But liability concerns, bureaucratic inertia, and institutional breakdowns meant it hadn’t been updated. And Isla de San Benito wasn’t a one-off. We learned that many islands, reefs, and capes around the globe clung tenaciously to outdated charts, pinned there by any number of institutional failures. Throughout our travels, we saw the hulls of abandoned yachts wrecked on reefs and rocks. There’s no way to know what went wrong for their crews—but inaccurate charts were almost certainly part of the story.

One of our prized possessions is this embroidered chart showing our path

That’s the danger—not just of poor information, but of neglected infrastructure.

When institutions fail to maintain the chart, individuals suffer—even if their compass is pointing true. If a compass represents personal virtue in my analogy, charts represent institutional authority and responsibility. To navigate safely, both must be trustworthy: the compass must reflect sincere moral intent, and the chart must offer a reliable, up-to-date picture of the world.

Halifax: A Contrast

Three years later, on the other side of North America, we had an experience that showed what’s possible when every part of a complex system is working—from individual actions to institutional coordination.

We were approaching Halifax in one of the lowest-visibility conditions of our entire four-year journey. Three major shipping lanes converge at the harbor entrance, funneling container ships, ferries, fishing vessels, and pleasure craft into the same narrow approach. We were a small sailboat with radar, charts, a working VHF, and—most importantly—an experienced crew that had navigated many tricky entrances, from intricate coral passes to busy commercial ports. (Namely, Ginny and me—although by this time we often sent the girls to the bow or partway up the mast with binoculars to call out hazards.) In a virtual whiteout, however, our usual routine wasn’t enough.

For the first time on our four-year trip, we radioed a harbormaster to report our position and intentions. Within seconds, a pilot from an inbound container ship broke in, requesting our exact location. On high alert, we switched to a working VHF channel to speak directly with the ship, confirmed they had tiny us on radar, and agreed that we would hug the extreme starboard edge of the southern shipping lane. Shoaling made it impossible for us to exit the channel entirely.

In moments, we could sense the presence of something huge approaching—felt but not seen. We anxiously scanned to port, hoping to spot the ship. As we peered into the mist, an almost ethereal bridge deck a few boat lengths away loomed above us and slid past, accompanied by the low thrum of large engines and the churn of prop wash. We hailed the pilot to thank him for not squishing us, then picked our way into the harbor and up the tributary where we planned to anchor.

On multiple occasions during our voyage we interacted with much larger ships

It was tense. But it wasn’t chaotic.

The systems worked. Charts, radar, radio, agreed-upon channels, shared conventions—all held. Everyone knew the rules, and everyone played their part.

That’s what good institutional infrastructure makes possible: coordination, safety, predictability—even in the fog.

The Broader Framework

As we’ve said before, Leaving a Clean Wake began as a literal call to good seamanship. But for our family, it has since evolved into something more: a first-principles ethical framework. One that can help individuals, communities, and institutions navigate their impact with intention and care. It neither promises nor demands perfection. It simply asks us to be aware of the trace we leave behind—and to shape it as thoughtfully as we can.

(If any philosophers—professional or armchair—take issue with our claim that Leaving a Clean Wake qualifies as a first-principles ethical framework, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. After all, our goal here is to foster community and dialogue.)

A compass can point us in the right direction. But only a well-drawn chart can help us get where we want to go—especially when the waters are crowded, the shoreline is shifting, and the fog rolls in.

Looking Ahead

In Part 2, we’ll step away from the nautical storytelling and take a closer look at how this plays out in real life: how individual action can spark institutional change, how institutional authority can scale impact for good or ill, and how neither works without the other.