NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John D. Howard
Date: 2018 Sep 18, 12:24 -0700
Robert,
I agree. Gatty was a 20th C. navigator and used a western approuch to CN. However - The Raft Book was a survival manual writen for non-navigators. His approch ( IMHO ) was to say " look around you - nature has all kinds of clues to use. " The first half of the book has pitcures of birds and fish and cloud patterens, charts of bird migration, distance from land that they fly, ocean currents and the like. He talks about the Polynesians, without modern instruments, found land - and so can you.
He then goes on to say in the second half of the book " Look at the sky, the stars and the sun, they can also help you. " He then gives very modern, western charts and tequinecs to find azimuth, lat and long. etc. I just think that like the Polynesian sailors CN was only a part of the bigger " look at the natural world "
Once again, I agree his methods, charts, and other methods were very modern and good.
John H.
