Gary wrote:
otnmbrd wrote:

That same bolt of lightening will take out your calculator so you
then have to work stars long hand. It'll also kill your digital
watch and radio so you won't have the correct time. It'll probably
short out your boat so you won't be able to work the stars out until
light the next morning. The lightening excuse to learn astro is BS.
Learn it because you want to or take a couple extra handheld GPS.
Practice dead reckoning. Know where you are all the time.

Gaz



Let's see...... calculator gone, long hand star calc's....add a minute
or two to the solution.
digital watch killed..... in that case I'm probably dead too so what
do I care.... always have a mechanical clock that you know the
error...no big deal, was done for years.
lights out?....lite a candle or wait till daylight.... what the hell,
it's offshore navigation, what's the rush....

And how did you check the error on that deck watch? Radio? What was the
error and how much does it change daily? Can't just do the time check
anymore. Damn lightening.

With all due respect Gary, I think you need a refresher course on
celestial. I wear a "windup" watch, and have two windup ship's
clocks. All of them are accurate to a minute a month, and have a
pretty consistent error rate. I generally set them once a week, so the
error is well under a minute. So, would you care to tell us what the
expected error would be for both Latitude and Longitude?

To be honest, I don't really buy the lightning argument either. But
I'm not sure some find fault in celestial because it is not accurate
to 3 meters.