A small lapse in attention, a misstep, and it has already happened. We just managed to save our bare lives, but our entire equipment has, quite literally, gone down the drain. The GPS was already unusable; the battery had been dead for some time, but now losing the compass as well is quite inconvenient. In the jacket pocket, there is still a completely soaked map, which might still be usable. Other than that, we have nothing left except for a pocket knife and a hopefully waterproof watch. While we are not in the middle of nowhere, we know that a road runs a few kilometers to the north that will take us back to civilization, but where is north? Intuitively, we would say it's in that direction. But is that correct? It would be good to have it right now.