NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Bill Morris
Date: 2017 Jan 22, 00:13 -0800
David
Your ship will have duplicated GPS radar and power systems together with accurate time. It will also carry a nautical almanac and probably two sextants that have never been used. If you are nice to the captain, he will probably allow you to do your chartwork on the ship's chart. On a well run ship, the position will be charted on paper every hour using the GPS position, if only to keep the watch keeper awake. All I took when crossing the Pacific in 2011 was my sextant, the Nautical Almanac, a scientific calculator, a good wrist watch, an exercise book with squared paper and a slim volume containing Joseph Conrad's "The African American of the Narcissus" and "Typhoon". I could have managed without any of them, as the officers were keen to accommodate me. After a short search, they even managed to find the sextants in a cupboard behind a mass of old paperwork.
Bill Morris
Pukenui
New Zealand
