Hawaii by Sextant

Description

by David Burch and Stephen Miller

This book offers navigation details of a full ocean passage as an excellent way to learn the ropes of practical celestial navigation. With your own tables and plotting sheets, you can analyze 224 timed sextant sights to obtain 26 position fixes to find your way along a 2,800-nmi voyage lasting 17 days. Sun, moon, stars, and planets are used. Solutions are provided by computation, filled-out workforms, and detailed plots using universal plotting sheets. After each fix, the range and bearing DR to Fix is recorded and discussed in light of proposed guidelines for ocean DR uncertainty.

Its uniqueness lies in using actual data from a 1982 passage during the Victoria to Maui yacht race. Other books of sample problems use contrived data to yield neat solutions. Here the results are not so neat, and much judgement was needed to make the best use of them. You are privy to those discussions. After completing this passage you will be prepared to navigate by celestial navigation on your own – if you choose to, or need to. Note that this is not a book on how to learn basic celestial navigation. This is an extended realistic exercise in using the cel nav you already know to enhance your knowledge and expand it with advanced methods that could be needed in special circumstances. SC, 2014, 170 pages. SW 0.8 lb.