GPS is a pretty wonderful thing. Throw in the chart plotting option with its ability to show you where you are on a chart and it makes life easy. Though every once in awhile I wonder if maybe just a bit too easy.
Not that I am going to go on with one of those back in the day when men were men sorts of rants as I remember quite clearly in those way back days reading editorials in sailing magazines about just how the introduction of VHF radio would ruin seamanship, allow lubberly losers to join our brotherhood and just possibly cause the world as we know it to end. VHF came and is still with us and the world did not end...So it goes.
Progress is good, VHF is a good thing and for that matter so is GPS!
GPS is also seriously cheap and as you can buy a full function hand held GPS for very little so pretty easy to have a back up or two...
Redundancy is also a GOOD thing and having a few extra GPS 's stuck away in lockers does make the need to fall back on basic navigation and the needful tools of the trade not a day to day occurrence but still not a bad thing to have up your sleeve if ever you find yourself a long way from where you want to be with a dodgy GPS and find all those cheap backups have dodgy batteries...or as we polite boaty folk say...FUBAR!
Like I said Murphy's law...
Sextants are cool, celestial navigation IS cool...For less than the price of one of those cheap hand held GPS's you can buy a sextant. Of course for under a hundred bucks it will be plastic and kind of cheesy but it will work...Of course if you get a sextant you will actually have to learn how to use the damn thing and that is where things get a bit problematic as most books on celestial navigation are pretty confusing and just the sort of primer that will insure that you stick the sextant away and go buy yet another hand held GPS or buy a farm in Kansas.
George Buehler however wrote a book. Actually book is too strong of a word
"How to Find Where You Are From the Sun" is more of a pamphlet really. Simple no bullshit with no boring stuff and just the info you actually need put together in a way that pretty much anyone but the village idiot and George W Bush might understand ( and I'd put even money on the village idiot being able to sort it out)...Easy...and after reading it you will be able to know where you are anywhere in the world even if you forgot to bring along the Duracell's. You might also want to consider just how salty you will look on the fore deck taking a noon sight...I'll be so bold as to say that if you can't sort out where you are from Buehler's book you really have no business sailing a boat further than say B dock and might want to give the whole nautical thing a miss and maybe go into politics...I hear the Republicans in Alabama are looking for a new attorney general...
On the other hand if you can read and follow simple directions you will also need a couple extras to make it all work out ( a nautical almanac and a watch). Reduction tables which are big and ponderous tomes but available online for free if you can navigate the US printing office or download here and if not there are quite a few CD collections of public domain info that makes sense to have on your boat and the cost is most likely worth the lack of hassle. Keep them on your computer and print out what you need when you need them before you sail off on whatever voyage you plan to do ( remember Murphy's law because Murphy won't forget you, and your computer is fair game if he is on a tear) and some charts of wherever you might wind up to back up those electric charts in your GPS chart plotter. Belts and braces!
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