
NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: sextant without paper charts
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2008 Nov 02, 23:09 -0500
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2008 Nov 02, 23:09 -0500
Robert Eno, you wrote: "Have to disagree with you on this one Frank. I have spent a lot of time noodling around with the SR tables in the Nautical Almanac and in my humble opinion, they are far too convoluted and complex and therefore does not lend itself to emergency situations where everyone is stressed out and already liable to make mistakes." When I first wrote that post, I typed it with HO211 as a compact method, but changed it to the NA method thinking that HO211 would sound archaic. If you could compare 211 with the tables in the almanac, do you think one is clearly superior for compact tables? You wrote: "But at the end of the day, it seems to me that HO 249 is the way to go. Two volumes and you can go anywhere." Probably a good choice. Another issue: since we're talking here strictly about navigation in a dire emergency, we also need to consider the possibility that the single sextant aboard the boat has survived, but the three to five men with navigational knowledge are incapacitated. This gets us back to real lifeboat navigation. What minimal instructions should be included in the sextant box to get the vessel to a friendly port under the assumption that no one with proper training is available? This, of course, is where I would recommend something like "latitude AND longitude by noon Sun". That technique can be learned in a day by a "well-motivated" student, and you can cross an ocean with it. -FER --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To unsubscribe, email NavList-unsubscribe@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---