Soon another group of sailors will learn the secret truth of celestial navigation. In only four weeks, in Marion, Mass. on April 10 and 11, an eager group of initiates will learn the astounding truth. They will be required to swear oaths of silence, of course. We can't have them divulging the mystic secrets that all celestial navigators have known and practiced forever. (Okay, just between us, I'll let you in on the secret: celestial navigation is easy and fun. But please don't tell anyone. We don't want to ruin celestial's intimidating reputation built up over centuries.) For a chance to learn this ancient art, contact our Ocean Navigator School of Seamanship and sign up. (Bring your own brimstone.)
On Dec. 24th the NY Times ran an obituary on Yitzhak Ahronovitch, who was captain of the ship Exodus that attempted to bring thousands of Jewish survivors of World War II to Palestine. What was particularly intriguing beyond Ahronovitch's exciting exploits was that the picture the Times chose to run with the obit showed Ahronovitch holding a sextant in front of the Low Library at Columbia University in New York. Occasionally celestial navigation still makes the big time! Thanks to our nav problem guru David Berson for tipping us off to the sextant photo.
Here is an original eclectic celestial/piloting exercise that will hopefully be a challenge. One of our regular contributors, Greg Rudzinski has concocted a photographic puzzle involving the sun, a clear horizon and a distant mountain. Give it a whirl and see if you can solve it.
To the editor: Even if you have no sextant, you can use a timed digital photo of the sun at low altitude to generate a line of position. For this task I use a Canon PowerShot A560 set at three power optical zoom, seven megapixel, and ISO 800. The high ISO setting helps reduce camera shake on a moving platform. The digital image of the sun (using a shade filter held out in front of the camera covering the sun) is downloaded to a laptop, cropped, rotated, and enlarged so that the sun has at least a 20 millimeter screen diameter on the laptop. This limits altitudes to about 6°. Measurements are made using a ruler directly on the laptop screen. The almanac diameter of the sun is given at…
To the editor: Capt. Joshua Slocum's historic solo circumnavigation of the globe, the first British Airways Concorde flight across the Atlantic, today's seagoing yachtsman peering at the digital readout of a GPS receiver - all of these can be traced to a brass strip in the courtyard of a 330-year-old English observatory. That bit of metal, polished to a satiny finish by the shoes of visitors who delight in shuffling from one hemisphere to the other, is the defining feature of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, eight miles east of central London. For mariners and airmen, however, this north-south sighting line on a hill above the River Thames has a much more important function. Since 1884 it has provided the internationally agreed-upon reference point - the zero meridian of longitude -…
What's the future of celestial navigation? It's still too soon to tell. But it seems clear that black-box navigation technology is rapidly changing the way celestial navigation is performed. Those who still have an interest in finding their way by sun, stars, planets, and moon can do so with substantially less pencil-work nowadays. Even the way we teach celestial is changingthis fall we begin teaching the first of a series of seminars covering techniques of celestial navigation using the Celesticomp preprogrammed calculator for sight reduction. These day-long classes, the first taught by Greg Walsh, will include full celestial theory as well as traditional sight reduction, offshore plotting techniques, the noon sight, and related topics. But students will be taught to perform the once-laborious sight-reduction techniques in just a few minutes…
To the editor: What many voyagers don't seem to appreciate about celestial navigation, besides its obvious back-up benefits, is the intellectual pleasure it gives the navigator in knowing how to plot a line from a celestial sight. I know from experience how good that feels. I set out to sea as a cadet in the Canadian merchant marine in 1946. In between chipping and painting I spent my time in the chart room gleaning what I could about chart work and the arcane ritual of sextants and chronometers. Little was actually taught to me, as it was by tradition left to the cadet to ask and sort things out for himself. In 1950 I changed professions and became a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I did my tour…
Celestial navigation was a required course in the naval science curriculum of the NROTC at the University of California in Berkeley during WWII. The fuzzy spots that lingered became clear when the staff ran us through it a second time the following semester due to the lack of electives. When the Navy decided it was not necessary to go beyond our junior year in order to function adequately as new officers, we were all commissioned as ensigns and sent off on our first assignments. Mine was to the Sub Chaser Training Center in Miami. At 19 years of age, I was full of enthusiasm and confidence and eagerly learned about a line officer's duties on sub chasers. My first ship was the PC (patrol craft) 599 at the Pearl Harbor…
When I was preparing for navigation duties aboard Mikmaks, a 1984 Stevens 47, on the 2021 Transpac Race, celestial navigation was at the top of my mind. A big reason for this was that I had just completed my 200-ton Unlimited Yachtmaster license, and International Yachtmaster Training for that license consists primarily of celestial navigation topics. On the race, I wanted to compete for the Transpac’s Mark Rudiger Celestial Navigation Trophy. I had used a sextant and worked out some sights over the years, but I had never solely relied on celestial before. So, the month of April found me working with a great friend who is a real whiz at celestial. We refined methods, and I learned the use of some key tables in Bowditch. After three brain-squeezing days…
