navigating the old ways

Matt,

You're describing piloting, or dead reckoning; the equivalent to celestial navigation when in coastal or inland waters. Whichever aids you use, navigating by observation and measuring or calculating is navigating the traditional way.

I suspect that there are a lot of folks who'd be lost if GPS went down. I remember the guy a few years back who needed to replace his prop because he tore it up crossing a rocky shoal that was clearly marked on charts. He didn't think he needed to learn to read a chart, because his LORAN gave him his straight line course to where he wanted to go!

 

well ok start with your mer pass, noon shot, thisi is how you can fix your lat
Get on deck with your sextant before noon, you will know when because on a sailing boat there is not a lot of difference day by day
you are then waiting for the sun to HANG, , at its zenith, , this will be true north if you are down here, and true south if you a re up there with you lot)
once you are satified that its at its peak, then you write down the altitude
The correct name for this is Local Apparent Noon,--LAN
So you bring the sun down to the horizon, rocking your sectant in a slowarc, til it ikisses the horizon, wait til it stops rising, then you write down the figure hs, say its 79, 10.0 S
you then have two corrections, the refraction and the observers height of eye IC AND d RESPECTIVELY, ic IS INDEX CORRECTION and D is height eye--(dip correction) these 2 figs are applied to produce the ha the index error is observed from the sextant on the horizon and the second from almanac, the result ha is entered in the sun tables and result is Ho (observed alt)
you then subtract Ho from 90 which gives the Zenith Distance(z) which should be called N or S (opposite the suns brg) next extract the declination at the time of LAN FROM aLMANAC AND ADD TO z IF SAME NAME and subtract idf opposite the result is your lat!!
it is very quick when you know how to find the right pages in the book!!
i used sun and moon together 1o days a month to give instant fix, but the moon moves quickly
Coastal nav is harder without gps, becuz so many factors come into play, but the sextant there is valuable, for distance off the land etc
You are right very few people can navigate well, and that includes me, but given time)
You can also DR your way from fixes if the weather packs in, to understand this you need basic geometry to understand WHy you are using your traverse table, its called A DAYS WORK

 

I carry and use a sextant and teach my crew to do sun sights particularly the easy noonsight. The reduction is on the laptop now which tends to remove the main errors and you don't need to buy the almanacs anymore.

I recently sailed Sydney to Hobart and used the sextant as the GPS was on the blink landfall was bang on... BUT supposedly experienced sailors aboard were completely unable to DR for their watches at night while I was asleep . Consequently we ended up a long way into the Tasman riding a gale rather than keeping to the sheltered coast.

Lots of boats dont even have water speed logs anymore relying on SOG from the GPS.

I think the GPS is still one of the best safety devices aboard after the motor. You are here!

 

yes Mike
But I made a point of talking to REAL ships caps, like big ships and I put it too em, RADAR OR GPS? and the result RADAR!! 100%
I concurr, as long as the radar can punch thru the crap, what is your yacht then Mike?

 

Current is an Adams 45, had a few, price wise from a Hartley Fijian to a Van de Stadt 57.

I find that when it really blows and rains the yacht ones are too close to the surface and too weak. I do like the superimposed GPS/ radar plots, too few people can really use a radar properly they have one but don't know how to use it properly. The current generations love looking at screens rather than out there looking at the sea and it can be a problem with crew who think the watch can be turned into a computer game.

Coastal sailing the radar is good, ocean people often don't turn it on except to check for the squalls at night.

When you have been sailing DR for 3 days in the Pacific pre GPS you had to miss some destinations as too reef strewn dangerous. The GPS-chartplotter is still magic to me and it makes night sailing feasible in areas we would just hold position and wait till dawn. You can even go through the passes at night if the tide suits with the GPS now..

Two pics of distracting crew note the patched GPS hole on the left of the helmsperson, smashed after the sea got a bit boisterous some weeks before.

 

i found woman the best crew I want to marry the woman in red )

 

She is a Dutch girl. I'll email her for you if she's not still in the Pacific her heart will be. There's lots of single women of various ages looking for boats, Fiji is a good hub for finding Europeans on 1 year ticket of leave. In the Caribbean I was innundated with applicants for a trip across the Pacific. They pay too!


Ummm what's your wife going to say?

 

That's MikeJohns in drag you fool....

 

When I was on a training cruise for Celestial Navigation we would get together and do what we referred to as a "running fix". We weren't allowed to go near the GPS since we were doing celestial, but several of us would run by the GPS and try to read a number or two without getting caught. After 3-4 folks went by, we had enough numbers to get our location and our "running fix". After that, we could tell how good (or bad) we were.

Celestial navigation is fun to do and a very good thing to know when you are sailing in blue water but with the advent of modern tools like GPS it is becomming a lost art.

 

And who can forget that immortal phrase - "East is least. West is best...."

 

not married!! free as a bird!!
When I had my first boat I used to pick up hitchers in Fiji, the woman were always the best crew, did not argue, some of the male would lose the plot with pretty gals aroung though
I remem,ber this German gal had a nasty tropical ulcer near her breast Well I was damn worried and neither she nor her boyfriend knew anything abt medicine or basic care So I had to examine it and tell her exactly how to treat it I remember the guy looked on with suspicion, But I fixed it She always gave me these under the lashes looks from then on, But us skippers are made of sterner stuff!! I just did my job

 

Astonishing confession: I have never piloted a boat by GPS. Never needed to, so far (nothing I have regular access to at present is capable of going beyond sight of land, at least not intentionally). And in a lot of my favourite cruising grounds, GPS is in fact not accurate enough- unless you get a top end, mil-spec WAAS-enabled differential unit which nobody can figure out how to work. Some passages, you just have to know the water; two metres to the wrong side and you lose a prop, while the centre of the channel can pass a small barge. I would never trust electronic anything as the sole nav method; there's gotta be a paper chart, compass, etc. out in the wheelhouse where they're easily read.

 

well I always have a paper chart out and the flat screen on, when I,m piloting Nimbus
but BP tanker lines are taking al paper charts off as from next year Electonics have become very very good

 

Not so astonishing, IMHO. I have never used GPS either.

 

God youa re so old fashioned!! get wiv it!! ese I will neg rep ya