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----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Thompson" 
> In the last 5 years I have never met anyone in person who has actually
> navigated by relying on CN. although I have talked with acquaintenances
> who
> tried a few sights on ocean passages in recreational boats.  They found it
> difficult to set up for sight-taking when other chores or rest times took
> priority.  A Coast Guard cadet at the College in Sydney learned CN from
> Canadian Power & Sail Squadrons before joining the Coast Guard, but says
> he
> is pretty rusty now. Most recreational boaters simply do not have the time
> it takes to learn CN, even if they are strongly motivated to do so.
>

Jim:

I spent the last week at the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, USA.
I spoke with hundreds of recreational sailors, ranging from beginning
cruisers to offshore veterans. A few people exressed dismay at the decline
of celestial navigation, but they too admitted that they had not relied on
celestial as a means of navigation in decades, if ever.

As the editor of Reed's Nautical Almanacs for North America and the
Caribbean, I was forced this year to make the decision to stop publishing
celestial data. In 2000, we eliminated the tables from our books, but
continued to offer them as a free separate volume to any Reed's reader who
asked for one. Of the tens of thousands of books we sell from Alaska to
Trinidad to Nova Scotia, our request for ephemerides slipped to about 150
this year. How many of those folks were actually using them is a figure I
could only guess at.

While our publications primarily serve recreational sailors and smaller
commercial workboat operators, I would estimate that the practice of
celestial nav among the world's ocean-going merchant fleets is now also
zero.

As you've indicated, the only people using a sextant these days are doing so
as a hobby, and it would seem that many of those hobbyists are shooting from
locations ashore -- an activity whose entertainment value escapes me.

I expect that the practice of celestial navigation at sea will increasingly
be constrained to sail training vessels. Like learning square-rig
seamanship, celestial's math requirements and the discipline of the day's
work will continue to offer young people valuable lessons that go beyond
practical results.

Carl Herzog
Providence, Rhode Island

   

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