This is a small collection of essays about a recurring problem in marine navigation: not bad data, but data that continues to look confident after the assumptions behind it have weakened.
Most modern marine tools rely on models — tides, weather, currents, routing, ETAs. These models are often excellent within the conditions they were designed for.
The trouble begins when we keep using them past those conditions, without being told that anything has changed.
The pieces here are not critiques of technology. They are attempts to describe where validity quietly decays, why that decay is confusing in practice, and how experienced operators learn to compensate for it.
These ideas are explored at length in Dead Reckoning.
What you'll find here:
- Explanations of real offshore confusion — not abstract theory.
- Why certain numbers stop lining up even when nothing appears "wrong".
- Where models remain useful, and where they should be treated cautiously.
- How interface design often hides uncertainty instead of revealing it.
The essays are meant to be read as a progression. Each one isolates a different place where confidence quietly outlives validity.