NOTE: This cache is 1 of 16 associated with the Ol' Salty Dog's Maritime Mixer cache series.
Find your way to the physical cache container at the coordinates revealed by solving the puzzle below. In the physical cache container, attached to the log, you will find a "puzzle piece" that will get you one step closer to finding Ol' Salty Dog's Maritime Mixer.
Position fixing is a technique in maritime navigation used to determine the position of a vessel on the surface of the Earth by determining the intersection point of multiple lines of position, lines along which the vessel is known to be located based on its relative position to other known objects. The intersection of multiple lines of position is called a fix which is used in position fixing to identify the observer's location. The creation of lines of position can be accomplished by using a variety of visual and electronic methods using celestial bodies, radio signals, satellite signals, radar returns, and visual observations.
Celestial navigation uses sights, or angular measurements, taken between a celestial body, such as the Sun, the Moon, a planet or star, and the visible horizon. Radio navigation uses the application of radio frequencies to determine the position of an object utilizing such methods as determining distance differences by the measurement of times of arrival of signals from one transmitter to multiple receivers or vice versa. Satellite navigation uses satellites to provide autonomous geo-spatial positioning. One such system is the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS) consisting of up to 32 medium Earth orbit satellites in six different orbital planes, the world's most utilized satellite navigation system.
With the use of surface radar, a signal returned by a charted object, that is radar conspicuous, provides a range (distance) between the object and the observer. The range can then be transferred to a nautical chart by striking a circle around the known object that returned the signal back to the radar, with a radius equivalent to the measured distance. This line of position is called a position circle, and the observer is located somewhere on this circle.
With the use of a telescopic alidade mounted over a gyro repeater, a position line can be created by observing a charted object and determining the absolute bearing, the angle between magnetic north and the charted object. A line of position can then be drawn on a nautical chart by striking a straight line from the charted object at an angle of the reciprocal bearing of the bearing observed to the object. This creates a position line, and the observer is located somewhere on this line.
Determining the position of a vessel sometimes requires redundancies. This is especially important when transiting between the open sea and into or out of areas such as bays, harbors, and rivers that contain numerous hazards to navigation and typically narrow channels of safe water. Even in the age of GPS, Coast Guard vessels still utilize the use of surface radars and telescopic alidades to fix their position when they are transiting through these areas. An evolution called a navigation detail is called and additional personal are assigned to man the various instruments and equipment used to fix the vessel's position.
An accurate fix, which identifies the observer's position, is created when multiple lines of position intersect at the same point. Utilize your sleuthing skill and fix the position of this puzzle cache's physical location.
From this location, there are three charted objects or points that both return a radar signal and can be observed visually. These locations along with their observed measurements are:
Goon Hill
Charted position: N 46° 39.103333', W 111° 43.523333'
Distance: 1.3018 km
Reciprocal bearing: 175.78°
Cave Bay Point
Charted position: N 46° 38.836667', W 111° 42.143333'
Distance: 1.8448 km
Reciprocal bearing: 244.16°
Cemetery Island
Charted position: N 46° 38.031667', W 111° 42.403333'
Distance: 1.4973 km
Reciprocal bearing: 297.37°
The coordinates for each of the known charted locations are provided, along with the distance and the reciprocal bearing to each object. With this information, one must find the terminal coordinates, given a bearing and a distance for each of these objects. Each of the resultant positions will likely be slightly different depending on what application was used to calculate the coordinates. In order to come up with a more accurate final coordinate, the three positions need to be averaged using a technique called "position averaging."
