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Subject: Re: Celestial Calculator Comparisons
From: Richard B. Emerson (navsys@XXX.XXX)
Date: Fri Mar 10 2000 - 12:16:25 EST
Joe Shields writes:
> As a landlocked armchair navigator who dreams of one day moving beyond my
> little 1 nm wide (at its widest part) man-made lake and out into blue water
> where I could do celestial nav. for real, I may be naive, but I am confused
> by all this concern over celestial calculators. Wouldn't regular use of an
> 'electronic' celestial calculator defeat the whole purpose of celestial
> navigation -- a reliable alternative/backup to 'electronics'. Doing sight
> reduction by hand (in both my opinion and the opinion of the ASA Instructor
> who certified me) is a volatile skill that needs to be practiced regularly
> to be reliable. What you don't use, you lose... which could be everything
> from your copy of HO 249 (or whatever) to doing accurate mental arithmetic.
>
> Is my thinking wrong that the best discipline is that my daily navigation
> would consist of doing traditional 'non-electronic' celestial/coastal/DR
> navigation to arrive at my position and then check it against the GPS. With
> everything in close agreement, my comfort-level would be such that any
> 'electronic' outage would not give rise to panic or drastically alter my
> navigational routine.
>
> Or is it more realistic that you are busier than a one-armed paperhanger,
> and you need all the shortcuts you can get.
>
> -- Joe Shields (lat:40 34, long:80 04)
You've asked a reasonable question. There are some folks who avoid
motors and electronics as much as possible (perhaps the best known of
this group are Lin and Larry Pardey of Taliesin and Serrafyn fame -
although, as Larry readily says, if they're delivering a boat "with
all the toys", they use them). The idea is to keep things simple to
reduce cost and aggravation.
There are people who load their boats with every known toy in the
catalogs. Maybe they pay for it and spend a lot of time in port
getting things worked on, but that's what fits their needs.
And some folks are in between. I count myself in that group. We have
GPS, radar, and a laptop as well as tables, a stopwatch, and paper
charts.
I don't think celestial navigation skills are any different from any
other skills. Use them and they're fresh, don't use them and you get
rusty. No surprise there. However, the object of the exercise is not
to spend a lot of time shooting and reducing, it's to get the boat
down the (metaphorical) road and hopefully enjoy the trip. Some days
there's all the time in the world and some days things are turning to
stink, the honey just ran down your sleeve, and there's three inches
of salt water in the cabin. On those days I'll take my calculator out
of its bag, do the work I have to do, and do my manual reductions on
the nice days when the boat's dry, the sun's shining, and the sails
are drawing nicely.
Even on nice days, having perhaps 6-8 shots to reduce and compare to
be *really* sure you got it right becomes a far less burdensome chore
when a few keystrokes and a few minutes will show which sights are
clearly off and which aren't. The same process can be applied
manually, of course, but boats are like small children: don't keep an
eye on them every minute and they'll find some mischief to get into.
Look in the books or check the rigging. Your call. [grin]
Rick
S/V One With The Wind, Baba 35
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