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Water horizon at X elevation?


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Somewhere I found a chart that tells you how far the horizon is at ground level looking across the ocean or large lake.

Any idea as to where to find it again?

I'm here all day bugging everyone as my wife took my truck and her car is in the shop. Being without a vehicle sure sucks when the closest civilization is 10 K away and I'm walking on crutches because I don't know why my foot is swollen and hurts like stink. There is water I can fish in 40 feet from the deck and I can't walk down there! Plus I can see the fish!!!! That's brutal.

"Fibre Malaysia" is Latin for "we don't know why it hurts, take these pills and go away".

Edited by Old Ironmaker
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I found it boatsafety.com. Calculating water horizon.

 

Calculate the distance to your eye line plus the height off the water. So a 6 foot person standing in the boat say is 9 feet. Take the square root of 9 (3). multiply 1.17 X 3 = 3.51. The waters horizon is 3.51 nautical miles.

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assuming the earth is perfectly spherical, the average radius of the earth is 6.371 million metres.

 

Therefore, the distance you can see out into the water is calculated as D = √(12,742,000x -x²) where x is your optical height above the surface of the water.

 

If you're eye level is 6' (1.8m) you can see 4,789 m out into the water. Old IronMaker is probably right, but I'm more accurate ;)

Edited by netminder
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