As a part of serial activities by the labour union group of the Center for Astro-geodynamics Research, a fascinating English salon titled “Sea Navigation” was held at SHAO on July 6th. Andy Calabia from Spain joined and shared with us many practical techniques as well as great happiness. Researchers including several international ones attended and made great communications.

Highly skilled in Geoscience and with a broad range of analytic techniques, Andy is a recognized academic and accomplished professional engineer. He is also active in boat sailing and skateboarding and has even got a sailing license. With beautiful pictures and diagrams, Andy introduced first the basic structure of a boat and then essentials of boat sailing, for example, what should we do with winds from different directions, how to use the sheet and how to properly anchor our boat.  And Andy also brought us knowledges of safety in deep sea navigation, such as finding the position, altitude, latitude and longitude measurement and emergency solutions for storms, man overboard and so on. And what’s more, researchers from different countries raised questions according to their interested points and shared information of their own.

Sea navigation is an amazing field which is not quite familiar to many of us though. We learned and enjoyed much in the salon. And we will try our best, with enthusiasm and innovation, to present good salons that can bring everybody knowledge, great communications as well as opportunities for oral English practice.