Celestial Navigation? Forget it!

[Valiente]

Just as a point of interest, I bought my 2009 almanac last week and my wife is signed up for CN classes in February. That 1976 Freiberger I bought her is ready to rock...

We own an Astra III B, the Freiberger and a plastic Davis 25 for my seven-year-old to practise with.

[travler37]

Originally Posted by camaraderie

Well...I'm all for anyone who wants to learn Celestial and it is just one more from of backup...but with the price of GPS units today you can safely store several units cheaper than you can buy a sextant and it would be extremely unlikely that you would have such a massive loss of equipment without losing the boat! With 3 GPS's...batteries and an EPIRB I feel SAFER than if I had 1 GPS and a sextant...I can put myself right into that tropical reef pass and not depend onn something with a 1-2 mile error.
Again...I think Celestial is wonderful to learn and it certainly makes for good navigation skills outside of celestial ...BUT...I'd rather have 3 GPS's than 1 Celestial navigator!

CAM,
Short read.Your a GPS guy.Great....

Do you store a sex and tables when it fails?

Fails as in lets say the MILITARY/GOVERNMENT gets in a pissing contest and the said GPS puts you 20 miles off you target? I could type senarios bit refrain.

And do you feal you family is safe?
My Question
Mark

[camaraderie]

Your question: Asked and answered before. The sun won't be out THAT day. I have a better chance of being hit by a bus in Wyoming.
My family is not just SAFE...but SAFER with multiple GPS's than ANY rliance on a sextant. My proof: 6 years of full time cruising with ZERO failures of GPS and MANY times when a sextant would have been useless if NEEDED.

Oh...it is also widely assumed that OUR GPS system would be degraded in a military situation to disadvantage adversaries. Not surprisingly...China has elected to construct their OWN GPS system to prevent this countermeasure. It is in place and has a reported accuracy of 10 meters. They do not rely on US for the delivery of their missiles.
Beidou navigation system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By the way...it is even more HIGHLY unlikely that I will be in the SPECIFIC area where GPS is degraded (Selective Availabiity) on a boat and out to sea.Note:

Q. Will SA ever be turned back on?

A. It is not the intent of the U.S. to ever use SA again. To ensure that potential adversaries to do not use GPS, the military is dedicated to the development and deployment of regional denial capabilities in lieu of global degradation through SA.

[denby]

Cam,

Do you plan on using your sextant on you RV?

[sailingdog]

No, but he will have ten GPS units aboard... the in-dash unit, plus another full-size road navigation unit and eight hand-held backups in a steel box with extra batteries—in case of a lightning strike or nuclear war...

[camaraderie]

Dennis the Menace strikes again! Will the winter never end??!!

[tjaldur]

Some topics seem to be ideological, that is depending on beliefs. So I admit that the reasons why I have a sextant and each year buy the Nautical Almanac is that I believe that I one day may need them. This belief in turn is founded on other beliefs. I believe that electrical failure may occur. That is, by the way, the reason why I also have paper charts, even when I have electronic charts.

I am not quite alone in this belief. The Royal Norwegian Maritime Directory that issues certificates for all kinds of skippers, do that concerning leisure-skippers (up to 50 tons) in to versions, one for coastal sailing and one non-limited waters. The difference between them being that an examination testing for adequate skills in CN is required to be licensed for all waters.

Forgetting about CN is a belief as well, just another belief or perhaps I should say, another faith.

Now one important aspect in my beliefs is that I also believe that I one day will cross the Atlantic ocean. Even though my ship went down last time (in the Bay of Biscay October 2008) I tried. Because I do not believe that I will need a sextant for sailing i the waters between the Scandinavian countries. I need my sextant ( or rather the new one I will need to buy because the last one went down with the ship) for crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

It is not possible to decide which one these two beliefs is the right one. It is only possible to decide which one of the two is the most prudent, when one want to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

[Valiente]

I certainly hope you achieve your dream, sir, because you have a very seamanlike attitude.

[tjaldur]

Valiente.

Thank you very much for kind words.

In fact I am closing a deal these days on buying a new skip. The ship is a home built after the design of Twister 28, designed by Holman, scaled up to 33,5 feet, built in 1986.

[Valiente]

That sounds promising. I finished a book recently in which a fellow spent a few months sailing around the Barrier Reef in a Twister 28.

Amazon.com: Passage to Torres Strait: Four Centuries in the Wake of Great Navigators Mutineers Castaways and Beachcombers: Miles Hordern: Books