38Talk:

Dear Frank,

I'd love to talk with you by phone about your navigation plans on board - I'll be on the leg the day after you, and our plans are very similar. I plan to take an octant from the 1840's, a cross-staff, a historical 'spyglass' from the era, a historical compass, and a recreated traverse board to log direction and speed. I'll also take a modern sextant. My hope was to have other Voyagers use the cross-staffs (used by Dutch sailors until surprisingly recent times, I'm told) and the modern sextant so that they can see what it is like to shoot the sun, and compare to the cruder cross-staff measurements. Among the open issues I'd like to sort out are (a) what chart to buy (and where) to try to transfer the traverse board records from each watch, and I'll also need some parallel rules and dividers; also, I'd like to try out the log line, which I gather that the ship has, and film its use. During the day, I wanted to take some sun sights so that I could eventually get a crude longitude by estimating the transit time of the sun. At night, I wanted at least to try for Polaris. If you are available for email and phone contact over the next week or so, please let me know so that we can discuss our plans, which sound fairly similar. - Dick French rfrench_at_wellesley.edu