Snowbird writes:

I came to aviation from boats. In that field of navigation, in my part of
the world we mostly use true north as reference, but I've seen charts using
magnetic north, e.g. in the Caribbean where the magnetic variation is
considerable (around 15 degrees). Also, all boat GPSes can be set to show
either true or magnetic north, so using magnetic north is obviously a viable
method also at sea.

Just out of curiosity, what are the usual navigation methods for boats and
ships these days? I suppose at sea you don't really have any equivalent of
VORs, so that's not an option, although I seem to recall that Loran and
(formerly) Omega were developed specifically for ships at sea (as well as GPS,
in part). It sounds like you don't navigate much with a magnetic compass.
And how do you find your way around with charts when you have no landmarks?

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