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Alex,
I've got my mail as a no set right now because of work duties and I don't
want to come into the office after days at sea and find 100's of
messeges.Bear with me.
In the past I've given an account of what we used to do onboard during a
transit for fun and personnal acheivement.It's in the archives somewhere.
On more than 1 vessel I served on the crew had many pools(gambleing)that
would be awarded to the winner of the subject pool.One of these pools was
for the closest calculated(celestial)position to the actual GPS pos when the
evolution was called by the master.
One such pool was awarded to a Polish national ABS who was a crew member at
the time.His personnal sextant was a SNO-T.It was his pride and joy.And he
was very proficiant in useing it and his grasp of cel nav proceedures was
impressive.Mostly he just used  the Sumner method.The rest of us mainly used
the St. Heliare method.On the occasion I write of he was around 0.2 nm from
the GPS pos when the evolution was called.This evolution ran over a time of
weeks and thousands of miles.Not to shabby a feat in the least.Most likely
the finest example of continued position finding by anyone I've ever
witnessed.
I was just going into the M.M. when the shift away from cel nav as the main
position finding method used while at sea.It was a few more years before I
was rated to stand as a member of the nav watch.By that time the change away
from cel nav was in full swing.I still got great practical training and
schooling in the art and have used it many times in my carrer.The last
transit I was on(last year)I could really notice the shift.I always take my
personnal equipment(Tamaya MS-733,plotting gear,NA and laptop) along for my
use and well feeling while working.The younger members of the crew(ratings
not officers) just thought it was great to witness the actual proceedure of
cel nav and wanted me to teach them as much as I could.You see they aren't
being exposed to it nor are they useing it today as they were even 5 years
ago.It's not a daily ship board requirement anymore.Even the officers have
so many duties(administrative,maintainance) that takeing time out to do a
couple of rounds of sights on a daily basis is asking quite a bit.

   

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