Learning Seamanship and Navigation

The Small Ship's Manual published by Queensland Transport has been the standard text book for coastal mariners for decades. It has everything you need to know in it except sailing techniques.

Navigation for Yachtsmen by Mary Blewitt.

Sailing Companion by Arthur Somers.

Tools:- Capt Fields Pattern Parallel Rules, Quality hand bearing compass, set of Jasco compass and dividers, HB pencils, eraser and charts.

The ships compass should have a deviation card.

Those books may no longer be published so try ebay.

May the seas be slight and the winds following. Have a great trip.

+1 for Mary Blewitt. Her explanations on Astro nav helped me pass the pussers SCGE years ago with a distinction. Can't remember anything from it now though!

Hi Doc, I have not seen Mary's books. But here is a guaranteed way to learn coastal Nav'..... Pick up a copy of Jeff Toghill's "Coastal Navigation", its not a daunting book at all, I have no doubts at all that if you read every page(sometimes I had to read pages two or three times to absorb it, you just have to want to learn it), you will learn all that you need to know.
Get yourself a Bi-rola Chart Protractor (I think its called) its easy as, parralell rules & rollers have no place on a small yacht imho there too easy to make an error with....being bumped around by swell etc, cheers

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Ramona said..

+1 for Mary Blewitt. Her explanations on Astro nav helped me pass the pussers SCGE years ago with a distinction.

Can't remember anything from it now though!

That is the killer. Like computer programs unless you are in them all the time, you forget how to use them.

Coastal Navigation is one thing all yachtsmen should learn. It is the area where there are things that you might hit.

The GPS systems in place have proven to be reliable and accurate so using traditional methods of celestial navigation has become a hobby thing more than a necessity.

I learned how to use celestial navigation in 1979 during a trans Tasman crossing east to west from a Master. The basic principle is solving a triangle and interpolation. It needs an accurate time piece, a sextant, a nautical almanac (where do you get them these days?) and a bit of mathematical skill.

The morning shot gives you a line of position, the noon shot gives you a latitude line of position and the afternoon shot gives you a line of position. Transposition of the morning and noon L.O.Ps onto the afternoon LOP by way of dead reckoning (observation of compass course and log reading of distance traveled) will give you a three line FIX late in the day which is just what you need.

Overnight dead reckoning is used to give an approximate position for the next day's observations which will confirm the accuracy or not of the previous observations.

Use of a $200 GPS unit to do all that laborious work is a far better idea so as to free one's time up for fine creative cooking and entertaining fine ladies ( if one is lucky enough to have a few aboard) and proving the fact that fine living on the finest yacht is far better than living in the finest house on the finest shore.

Cisco, more to astro navigation than just sun shots.
To get an Ocean Nav ticket we had to navigate a ship from port to port over a certain distance. I did mine from Freo to Adelaide.
We had to get a morning star fix using at least 3 stars, a midday sun shot and an evening star fix. The star fix cocked hat had to be within 2nm I think. If the stars weren't visible and the sun was we got a sun shot morning and evening.
I have a little sextant and would love to give it a go on Morning Bird but getting the almanac and Norries tables is just too difficult. If anybody knows where I could get them for a reasonable price let me know.

Surely by now someone has developed a computer and even a mobile phone ap for celestial nav. (If not get to it you geeks). Enter the sighting info and voila your position. II recall in my earlier days having to use a slide rule which had many lines of log and other markings. I still have the slide but I can't for the life of me remember how to use its features now except for basic multiply and divide functions. The point of this is that technology has advanced and even if knowing how to carry out celestial nav the technology has gone beyond pen and paper and almanac tables. You are dependent on having an accurate functioning timepiece in any event are you not.

Arguably the principal motivation in navigating by the stars is you don't need outside assistance or technology. Using an app on the device you can't charge because your electrics got cooked seems to defeat the idea.
However, I will download one of these so that I can play with my sextant.

Half way through reading this old one that was dads.
Can't put it down. Very easy to read. Written in the 70's, so a few of the electronic references are out dated but still the same non the less and is a great book for novices navigators like myself.
I am sure this is the one mentioned in previous posts above.
Published by Reed and the dewi number is ISBN 0589071653 should you want to go to your local book shop or order online.

actually most people have a GPS to use with a paper map...a phone with GPS out of range of mobile reception still gives Lat/Long, which you can plot on a map. So still good idea to have a map.

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cisco said..
Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

I have the Navionics on mine and I hear that the iPad version is somehow better and more user friendly and the really annoying part is that I hear the same thing for a lot of iPad versions. Now I'm not sure if this is actually the case or if the Android versions are not as good.

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LooseChange said..

cisco said..
Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

I have the Navionics on mine and I hear that the iPad version is somehow better and more user friendly and the really annoying part is that I hear the same thing for a lot of iPad versions. Now I'm not sure if this is actually the case or if the Android versions are not as good.

I don't really know anything else but iPad what is a Android? ! Is Android like blackberry? Haha

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LooseChange said..

cisco said..
Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

I have the Navionics on mine and I hear that the iPad version is somehow better and more user friendly and the really annoying part is that I hear the same thing for a lot of iPad versions. Now I'm not sure if this is actually the case or if the Android versions are not as good.

The fixed keel Cole 23 we have visiting us for a few weeks used a Raymarine Navionics plotter to attempt an entry to Shoalhaven heads recently. Last bloke I know off to do that successfully was Bass in 1796 and from accounts it was not too succesful. Have a look at your Navionics chart for that area then compare it to a real chart.

Navionics does have gaps in it but remember it is only a navigation AID.

Using an electronic aid for astro nav kind of negates the challenge of getting from A to B just using the stars, sun, moon and planets and your trusty sextant. Norries is timeless I think, almanacs are yearly.
However, the iPhone app will allow me to play with my sextant and keep the skills alive. If I do a major ocean passage I'll find the pubs I need at the time.

Morning Bird ... any chance to suggest iPhone apps, for Astro...didn't have much luck

Stone ... Using the tables is not that difficult .

I believe would be a program for programable calculators /seen for HP, /
but I need to find for TI.
That would completly eliminate tables.