NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Greg Rudzinski
Date: 2011 Sep 20, 09:57 -0700
Patrick,
Our very own George Huxtable posted the following on Marvin Creamer back in 2000.
"I can fill in some of the gaps in the story of the yachtsman who sailed
round the world without instruments. He was Marvin Creamer, a geography
professor from Glassboro State College, New Jersey. He took his departure
from Cape May in 1982, with crew, in Globe Star, a 36-foot steel cutter. He
returned in 84, having put in at Cape Town, Hobart (Tasmania), and Stanley
(Falklands). He did not use a single instrument, though they were sealed up
in a bag just in case. He eschewed even compass, log, and wristwatch,
though he did carry an hourglass, for changes of watch! He had made
previous uninstrumented passages, from Ireland to New Jersey, and a round
trip from New Jersey to Dakar (West Africa), returning via the island
landfalls of Cape Verdes and Bermuda. My information comes from the issue
of "Navigator" dated July/August 1985, pages 30-35. He also read a paper at
the Institute of Navigation annual meeting, Annapolis 6/85, entitled "The
first circumnavigation without instruments: a small step backward", of
which I have a photocopy.
Creamer obtained his latitudes by identifying a star with known declination
that happened to transit through his zenith, directly overhead, estimating
this by simply looking straight upward, after a lot of practice. He was
just as unaware of his longitude as was an eighteenth-century mariner, so
had to sail down a parallel of latitude to reach his landfall. It's the
sailing without a compass that I find most awesome."
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