Leaderboard

To answer the original question, yes, it would be a major issue, and the usa have the capability of turning off the public system, reserving it for their military. The Eu with Britain's help started building the rival Galileo system, but since Brexit, our involvement and access is no longer guaranteed, and the UK is currently looking to go it alone. From the perspective of us as small boat owners, we should all have the tools and skills to find a safe harbour without electronic aids. Even in fog, the combination of compass and paper chart, from a known or estimated position should be good enough to find Bournemouth Beach, for example, then follow the coastline into Poole.

It's an issue the world has not yet woken up to and it's going to make many more incidents that have currently occured to make government stick their hands in the pockets to spend the big money to do something about it. Even if the UK had a system like eLoran in operation that's not going to help ships coming in from overseas until they get here and of course the ships need to have it installed. It's a worldwide problem, there are multiple bad actors. GPS is so brilliant and easy to use traditional navigational skills pale in comparison, I'm sure most boating people are very out of practice (including me) if indeed they ever were skilled at it.

Belt and braces on mine 2 chartplottters 2 fishfinders 2 vhfs 2 compasses Still bugger all fish😞