I just found the Burch title at the bookstore today! Based on my brief skimming it is an excellent read. My sea daddie ( A senior coastie who smart E2's mentor under) taught us skills more in time with H.M.S. Pinafore than the glowing screens of our electronics array. Years later my boat took a 360 roll crossing the bar. The flying bridge ( and crew) were a shambles; no electronics, no radio, no searchlight, no nothing. We proceeded to assist a disabled fishing boat in little better shape than us. Return over that bar was suicidal, waiting out the worsening conditions more so. There was another refuge just north with a notorious entrance that ate the innattentive even in daylight. Remember the scene in Red October as they turn into the two pillars by Sean Connery's mental calculations? I took a final bearing on an all night Foster's freeze hamburger stand sign that would center itself on the bow at just the right moment, all else being correct DURING DAYLIGHT. We scraped some paint, but slipped in. This stuff is truly fascinating. I also recall a Free French tank commander entering Paris came up on a german tank directly across a famous landmark. He remembered the precise distance from some long ago boring school lesson. He destroyed the tank <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> In Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint- Exupery told of pilots marking their charts with " the little ditch unseen on an emergency landing field"