I know little of offshore boating, and almost nothing about sailing. What I do know a lot about is
GPS. With a Dad that works for NASA in Florida, and an Aunt who literaly wrote the manual for the first
GPS reciver in the 80's for ground infantry in the army, I come from a family in the know. I wrote a college thesis on
GPS technology as well.
The most imporatant thing to remmember is that
GPS is made up of two seperate components, the reciever, and the Transmitter. You have complete control of the reciever. You can buy recievers that are almost indestructable, water proof, and I would say much more reliable than a sextant (which before today i thought was spelled sexant)
But the reciever is only half of what is required to use
GPS. Almost everyone in the United States relys on the Department of Defenses NAVSAT Array, a series of 24 satalites that your recevier uses to triangulate a position. The Russians have an incomplete array, and the EU is planning to put up an array, GLOBAL something or other.
First and formost thouse sattlites are for the deffense of this nation, and will, and have been used as such! The military did not release the full potentional of the
GPS system untill Clinton told them to unscramble the signal in 2000 (then called selective avalablity) And they withold the ability to rescramble and even stop the signal for use by the military if they need it.
For example, in the Iraq war they would move as many of the NAVSAT sattlites as possible over Iraq (up to 7 of the 24), then program them to compensate for weather affecting the signal, and this is just what has been declassified! Do you think a civilian
GPS recevier worked anywhere near Iraq during the first months of the war?
And this is just what the Department of Defense can do to the signal, what about solar interference that can make gapping holes in satilite coverage, or space trash destorying satilites? God forbid you the only one relying on
GPS for navigation when the military moves a sattlite from over the south pacific to fill a hole in thier covarage elsewhere.
Dont take
GPS for granted, its not yours. Only the reciver in your pocket is yours. On the other hand, a sextant is yours, you have control over it. You can drop it, but at least you will know why it doesnt work.