NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Timekeeping and sight time records
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2005 Mar 16, 17:53 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2005 Mar 16, 17:53 -0500
Fred-Nice theory. In 1985(?) I was crewing out of Newport, RI and we had satnav on the boat. Except, none of us could get it or the HF radio to work, apparently the wiring to the autotuner and antennas was fugatz and we had other things to work on. Since the Newport Boat Show was in town that weekend, I figured SOMEone had to have a way to give us the time. Nope. No one. And lacking any better ideas (and you remember that long distance calls from pay phones CO$$T money back then, no cells phones either) I called the Point Judith USCG station to ask them for a time reference. "Uh, about 7:30 Sir." When I explained we were trying to set the ship's clock and needed something a little better than that...he said "7:31". Yah, well, I guess the real sailors were on leave that weekend. We pooled our watches and got close enough to what we needed. After all, sooner or later you see a coast and start piloting. Computers? Radios? Fah. Would have been nice to have a GPS with that nice "poll of twelve atomic clocks" time display on it!
