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George wrote previously:
"I have not yet met a graduate of the Frank Reed school of Celestial Navigation"

And Geoffrey wrote:
"You have met me George and this method is how I started out getting to
grips with celestial navigation. Having graduated from the "Frank Reed
school" and my interest aroused, I then went on to gain "a rounded
understanding of position lines and sight reduction, how to read a nautical
almanac, how to use the Moon or take a twilight round of star
observations..." Frank's point, though, is that it was not necessary to go
on and do the post-grad course to be able to navigate successfully and
safely around the world - provided the limitations of the method are born
in mind. But that is true whatever method is used."

Quite so.

AND NOW FOR AN ANNOUCEMENT!

The "Frank Reed School of Navigation" is expanding from its humble quarters in 
Mystic... We have recently acquired a new classroom facility on the shore of 
Quonochontaug Cove in Quahog, Rhode Island. Our state of the art facility 
includes the latest Macbook laptops (running both OSX and Windows Vista) at 
every desk and two high-definition plasma monitors for group presentations. 
We have also acquired fifty unused (still in the original packing materials!) 
surplus sextants from the USCG facility at Quonset Point which recently 
closed. Furthermore, we have arranged a charter arrangement with the 125-foot 
schooner "Spirit of Quahog" which will take students out on the waters of 
Block Island Sound for Noon Sun sight rounds and also evening star sights for 
advanced students. Two-day seminars on latitude and longitude by Noon Sun are 
currently being sponsored by the SCA and will cost students only the price of 
materials: $25.00 total. Classes for advanced students, including, of course, 
a class on lunars, will be available at somewhat higher prices starting at 
$250 per day. Students may stay overnight at the lovely Dewdrop Inn located 
in a beautiful cottage setting next to the quaint old lighthouse on a small 
hill overlooking our classroom site and the pier where "Spirit of Quahog" is 
normally moored.

.
.
.

Had you going there for just a second, didn't I? Alas, no. There is no such 
thing. Just so there's no misunderstanding and folks don't start looking for 
our web site, my eponymous "school of navigation" is purely metaphorical! It 
don't exist in the real world.

Oh, and Quahog is a fictional town (though widely known in American pop 
culture) and as far as I know there is no schooner named "Spirit of Quahog" 
(a quahog is an Algonquian name for the local hard-shell clam --you fish for 
them with your toes in sticky black mud). And there are no rooms full of 
Macbooks and HD plasma monitors ready to teach celestial navigation, no 
surplus sextants to be resurrected from the dustbin, no support from the SCA 
(the Society for Creative Anachronisms), no inn by the quaint lighthouse... 
It's true: nothing that I write is true.

But Quonochontaug is real and so is Quonset Point, and Wequetequock where I 
used to live. There are a lot of Q's in the toponyms of southern New England. 
:-)

-FER



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