NavList:

Thanks for the nice exercise Greg.  I literally had to dust off the ship's Vol III of HO 229 and deflower a Plotting sheet 925 to work this one out.

 

Since I was bereft of electronic gadgets, I did this with a plotting sheet, 2 triangles, a pair of dividers, 2 books, a pencil, and small piece of scratch paper (wouldn't have reams of paper in the Lifeboat).  I have attached a picture in to this message with the plot and the tools.

 

My Lat is a bit lower (plotting or math error?).  I used an assumed position method and HO 229.  I had to assume we were drifting and no current (didn't advance or retard the lines).  I had not done a full HO 229 paper reduction of a star in many years, and I had to think a second to remember how to use the interpolation pages on the inside covers for the declination interpolation.  I usually whip those off with the calculator.  Still, I got pretty close to the computer solutions with Lat 34deg 11.9' N and Longitude 119deg 16.0'W.

 

As to how you would get an Eastern sight on the west coast, you would have 2 options in general.  The first would be a back sight.  This would be particularly difficult with a regular sextant at such a low altitude.  The other option would be to use a bubble sight tube or other artificial horizon.  If you were across a bay, you could also use a dip short of the horizon table.  That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

Jeremy