unless the man I relieved was steering True, not Magnetic.
Of course, we were well offshore, so it wouldn't have mattered all that much. We were traveling roughly parallel to the coast, closing gradually. Point Lobos juts out, it was like a wall in front of us.
In most areas, the difference between T and M is no big deal, and a helmsman of a sailboat is usually +/- a few degrees anyway, not to mention the effects of current drift and leeway tend to make helm precision the least of your worries. On long voyages, these factors tend to cancel out, although over a short stretch in bad visibility they can easily eat your lunch.
What probably happened was that the skipper took a LORAN fix (this was before GPS) and simply plotted a direct course on the chart from there to Santa Cruz, forgetting to correct for magnetic error. Its the kind of mistake anyone could make.
In my central Florida home waters, compass variation is much less, and I often ignored it. But I sailed a MacGregor 22 in San Francisco Bay and I was well aware of the problem.
Off Topic » in reply to 15 degrees?
We were probably already off course...
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