NavList:

   

Reply

Frank Reed's recent posts about latitude and longitude by noon sun
reminded me of a local doctor who had a boat on the Chesapeake with his
brothers.  One fall, the brothers threw a book on celestial navigation,
and a sextant, presumably, at the doc and told him to learn how to get
them to Bermuda.  They set out the next spring, but the doc hadn't
quite learned the ropes yet.  They got most of the way to Bermuda by
asking passing vessels for position information!  Then they ran into a
U.S. Naval Academy training vessel heading for Bermuda and followed her
in.  Once there, the skipper of the Academy vessel invited the doc
aboard and they talked about navigation and such.

The doc was very surprised later in the evening when a lieutenant
dropped by and said his skipper had told him to teach the doc
navigation.  After the doc's head started hurting a bit, he tried to
get the lieutenant to let him go to bed, but the lieutenant said he had
been given mission by his skipper and, by god, that doc was going to
learn how to navigate then and there.

So the doc learned how to take a noon sight.

Fred Hebard

   

Reply