Barry Natale
Instructor - Marine Training Center
Natale, a native of Stamford and 1973 graduate of Westhill High School, recently completed a 30-year career in the military that consisted of enlistments in both the United States Coast Guard and the United States Navy Submarine Force. He is now a navigation instructor at Landfall Navigation in Stamford and will soon be involved with Landfall’s extensive list of course offerings.
While in the Coast Guard, Natale’s assignments included search and rescue stations in New Haven, Eatons Neck, Charleston, and New York. He also served a tour of duty in Iraq during 2009-2010 as the Training Chief of USCG Redeployment and Inspection Detachment where he and his shipmates assisted ARMY units with HAZMAT shipping procedures and U.S. Customs inspections prior their rotating back to the states. Natale considers this duty, assisting troops as they headed home after serving in the Middle East, as the highlight of his Coast Guard career. “They treated us like rock stars,” he recalls. While in the Navy during the height of the Cold War, Natale served aboard the USS Cavalla SSN 684, a nuclear powered fast-attack submarine stationed in New London, CT. He qualified in submarines while aboard the Cavalla and on September 9, 1975, he earned the submariner’s designation (SS). His Dolphins were pinned during one of the 90-day intelligence gathering deployments that Natale experienced as an Interior Communications Electrician. “Extended periods of monotonous routine punctuated by random incidents of controlled anxiety,” is how Natale describes life aboard a fast-attack submarine. Natale’s contributions to the science and art of marine navigation include his prompting a revision to the Bicentennial Edition of Bowditch concerning the concept of time as it applies to the International Date Line, and his receiving a copyright for “The Natale Method of Collision Avoidance,” which is a RADAR plotting technique that is intended to introduce boaters to the concepts of relative motion. As one of his personal missions, Natale is committed to resurrecting traditional marine navigation techniques, to include the dying art of maneuvering board plotting. He views such skills as essential elements of safe and efficient vessel navigation.