Being relatively serious for a moment I actually do disagree here.
There is Celestial and then there is Celestial.
I do agree you don't really have to have a 1000$us sextant on board when you have
GPS. It is very expensive and I think that is the single point that makes people decide not to carry it. I mean, let's face it, if a good sextant cost 20$us, of course everyone would carry one as a backup. It's the price of a good one that keeps a lot of people from carrying one because they know they can buy 5
GPS receivers for the same amount and it does "the same thing". And that's fine, price/benefit analysis ... whatever.
However ...
Using a sextant to get a precise lat/long is NOT all there is to Celestial.
Celestial navigation is also being able to look up into the sky and find Polaris and know that you're looking north. Simple, effective, easily double checks your
compass, and is just basic common sense that you should know where Polaris is in the sky.
Celestial navigation is being able to use whatever you have on board to measure the angle up to Polaris, because that angle IS your latitude. For me I always carry a small
compass that has a second free moving needle that I can measure angles with. I use it to measure angles for bridges and things so that I can calculate how high they are with a little trig. But I can also measure the angle up to Polaris with it to within a degree, so as long as I can see the stars at night I can figure out to within a degree or so what my latitude is in this hemisphere. So easy you'd be crazy not to know how to do that. I mean without any instruments at all you can hand draw a 90 degree angle, divide that into 2 45's, further divide that, etc, and use that to figure out the angle of Polaris and know what your latitude is within a few degrees. Then without a single instrument you can sail latitudes if you know the latitude of anything. I mean that's just basic stuff there, everyone on a boat in an ocean should be able to do that.
Celestial navigation is knowing the latitude of a few important stars. Why ? Because if you know the latitude of Vega for example then you always have some idea where you are if Vega is visible. If it's a little south of you in the sky at it's zenith then you are north of it's latitude. If it's a little north, you are a little south. If it's directly overhead then you know what your latitude is. Simple as that. And there are enough stars like that so that if you actually knew a bunch of them you'd pretty much always roughly know your latitude with a casual glance upwards at night.
Celestial navigation is just learning the constellations and stars and using the sky to find your position so that you develop a kind of feeling for it. After a while you don't even have to figure out which stars are which, etc, you just kind of look up and know where you are. Kind of like being in your hometown, you don't have to figure out how to get to your favorite fast food joint, you just know where it is, and it can be the same with the sky over a period of time.
Those are just a very few basic ways you can use Celestial navigation, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. There's the southern cross in the south, there's using star paths, there is the watching two stars settle on the horizon at the same time, measuring arcs between stars with your hands, and just a huge wealth of things you can do just by using the stars with a little bit of practice.
And if all that is at all interesting, sure, you can get some gear and do more ...
Celestial navigation is keeping a few watches around and setting them before a journey so that you always have GMT time. Why ? Because GMT time IS your longitude. If you have GMT there are a lot of ways to get your longitude, and if you don't have it then there is basically no way at all to get your longitude if you don't have
GPS. If you have a watch you can get GMT from the
radio and various other ways, but without
GPS you have to have time. Once you have time you can take a really rough sight off of any star, the Sun, moon, all kinds of things with homemade equipment and get a rough idea of your lat/long.
Just being able to use GMT time to find your longitude using the time of sunrise or sunset is a basic skill everyone should know as far as I am concerned. I mean it's so easy to do and the information is so valuable I just don't see any reason not to learn how to do that. That's a basic survival skill on a boat and I think it's negligent not to know how to figure your longitude in at least one way with GMT if you are out of sight of land. You don't need a sextant to calculate a rough lat/long so there is no excuse for not knowing how to do it when a quartz watch costs like 5$us.
And sure, Celestial navigation is having a sextant if you want one. Mine cost 40$us and is just a cheap plastic thing I ordered from West Marine. Why ? Because I have the same basic feelings about "Celestial navigation" as a lot of people do - I don't want to spend 1000$us on a delicate sextant. And I know that I can find my position pretty precisely (though maybe not as precisely) with the cheapest of sextants. It'll be more difficult to take a site, etc, but with some patience it can be done.
So anyway, I do disagree that Celestial navigation is too old school to bother with. There is a lot of good stuff in there that I think any sailor would want to know even if it's just as a convenience. Certainly something like knowing where Polaris is, that's just basic common sense. If you're out on the deck you don't want to have to walk all the way over to look at a
compass just to see what direction you're going, you definitely want to be able to just look up in the sky and know which way north is if the stars are out so you don't have to put your drink down and drag your carcass off the deck.
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