"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:26:00 -0700, "Capt. JG"
wrote:

Can you navigate (lat and long) at night with a sextant and a compass, but
without a nautical almanac, sight reduction tables, the time of day, and
without knowing the names of the stars? The sextant has an error, but you
don't know what it is, just that it's off. You can keep your modern watch,
but you just replaced the battery and the time is wrong.

I assume this is a quiz? You can use a sextant to measure horizontal
angles and take relative shore bearings, other than that I think
you're out of luck. You can not take star sights at night (no
horizon), only at twilight.


Does someone own a sextant? What model? I'm thinking about picking one up.

I've owned this one for years and people have crossed oceans with it:

http://tinyurl.com/6fdkfr

It works but I prefer my GPS chartplotter.



Yes, it's a quiz and it's possible...

Not sure what you mean about not being able to use it at night... What about
the artificial horizon common on modern sextants?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant

I'm somewhat familiar with the Davis models... thinking about playing around
with the 25.


--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com