If you can live with the fact that for example mid-day might be 6pm on the watch by the time you arrive, it is better to stick to one time zone. Time changing underway, as you cross meridians, adds overhead and confusion to navigation. To make navigation simple it is better to keep ship's time on one time zone (perhaps UTC). It is far more important during land fall where you need to establish actual position as soon as land comes into view (lighthouses and high land features). High accuracy is not required as long as there are no hazards in vicinity - in the open ocean. Your position is no longer a point, it is an area/circle. But the art of traditional navigation is not knowing where you are, it is knowing where you could be. On small boat you can expect an accuracy of 1 mile at most and only in favourable conditions. When you are navigating out of sight of land you will not be able to pin point your position so accurately as with the GPS where you get an accuracy of 5 meters or so. Sailing using just celestial objects is a really special experience and requires a completely different approach to navigation. lightning), you can use astronavigation to navigate, and is the only method of doing so that requires no electronics. If your GPS fails for whatever reason (e.g. However, GPS is dependent on electric power and complex electronic, which cannot be repaired at sea. Today satellite navigation is the primary means of position fixing for the vast majority of long-distance sailors. It was therefore a crucially important skill. the Sun, the Moon, a planet, or a star) and the visible horizon.īefore GPS became generally available in the early 1990s, astronavigation was the only method of position fixing available to yachtsmen on ocean passages. IntroductionĬelestial navigation, also known as astronavigation, is the ancient but still used practice of position fixing that uses “sights”, or angular measurements taken between a celestial body (e.g. Fundamentals of one of the oldest seamen’s skills and arts.
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