NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2015 Mar 31, 01:56 -0700
Greg
We’re speaking the same language. I thought you were implying that you could carry a calibrated master compass around with you and use it as required. I’ve got to admit I’ve not swung my 27’ Sabre for a while. She’s fibreglass but, in the cockpit, it’s difficult to get very far away from her big Yanmar engine. GPS has made me lazy. I carry twin GPS 12s, one on the weather boards and one on the nav table. I just make my track over the ground equal the track I want. In the Humber, the tide is so strong I just work on whether buoys are opening or closing against the land.
When I swung my little Mosler Pup when I had her, I found an area well clear of the hangars. Then I wandered around everywhere I was likely to walk taking bearings with a hand bearing compass on a recognisable object on the distant hills to check the bearing was as expected at every position. Then I did a normal swing on the Pup.
