Supporting The Navigator
We have been able to share The Navigator message so widely thanks to the generous support of the International Foundation for Aids to Navigation (IFAN), which allows us to print and distribute 100,000 copies of every issue around the world. We asked John Hughes, one of IFAN’s directors, to tell us more about what IFAN does and why they support The Navigator’s mission.
IFAN’s core business is providing navigational aids and information in the Persian Gulf, including buoys, lights and DGPS. On top of that, it is a charitable organisation that supports a number of projects. They’re all related to safety and safety at sea and they’re all international.
It’s important to spread what funding we have as widely as possible, which is why it’s great that The Navigator gets to so many ships all round the world.
It fits very well with our objective of safety at sea to be sponsoring something that makes a real tangible difference to how seafarers of today’s generation look at navigation and safety. There isn’t another publication anywhere in the world that deals with navigation issues and seamanship issues in the way in which The Navigator does.
THERE IS NOTHING ELSE QUITE LIKE THE NAVIGATOR- LONG MAY IT CONTINUE
Attitudes to safety have changed since I went to sea in the early 1960s. People’s understanding of how things go wrong has improved; the way they behave has changed – I don’t think we even knew what safety shoes were, back then! I guess the change has been subtle because it takes place over such a long time, but the generation at sea today are much more aware of the risks than I was.
Somebody rightly said you never actually fix safety. With each generation new issues become important, and different things matter. Even for those who are qualified as master mariners right now, it’s probably some time since they themselves were at college and technology moves on. One of the great things about The Navigator is that it picks up on current trends and current changes in a way which is understandable and makes good sense. That really makes a difference.