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Allow me three comments, please:

As for marking the time of observation in our days - for the lonely navigator 
without the crew, it should be difficullt to mark twilight observations of 
several stars on deck even with modern stopwatches you have mentioned - 
either he has to write notes in the flying spray or to go under deck to make 
them. Both is cumbersome. Is it not possible to use some sprayproof sound 
recorder (a digital one today, not mechanical)? And I saw some "chronographs" 
with the lap function that can be fitted to the sextant, e.g. "Datascope" by 
Celestair, but other cheaper solutions in catalogues of sextant makers, too. 
The combination of those two gadgets seems an ideal set for a today's lonely 
celestial navigator (or for a holiday navigator whose family isn't interested 
in CelNav :) to me.

According to the standard Russian work on the nautical astronomy from the 
fifties and sixties (Matusevich, "Fundamentals of the Nautical Astronomy"), 
in no way was permitted to take the chronometer to the deck. For marking 
observation times, the observation clock was used, jumping in half seconds 
(or in 0.4 seconds, so as to make very accurate comparisons of chronometers 
possible - by sound coincidences). This aggrees to Alexandre's quotation by 
memory.

I cannot understand, why the observing mate would have said "yest = yes sir" 
to the petty officer marking the time of observation. This "yest" means 
"There IS the contact now" probably, isn' it? Of course, I am not a Russian 
native speaker.


Jan Kalivoda

   

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