The purpose of the next exercise was abandon the compass in favour of using natural features, preferably ones that did not move, as navigational references. My training as a Cartographer should have put me ahead of the curve but my eyesight, or lack thereof, let me down.
I totally missed the cue as to where home was. Noticing that my instructor headed off in an arbitrary direction, I assumed that the assessment had commenced and that he had already pointed to the most obvious feature as “home”. Following our instructor and as many natural clues as I could, I noticed that we were moving in a slow left handed arc that was almost full circle.
So when our instructor signalled “where’s home”, I knew it was almost straight ahead at a bearing of around 340 degrees. The only feature that prevented us from seeing “home” was a crest in the sea-bed, covered with a garden of coral. When we glided over the feature, there it was: no place like “home”.
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