"Capt. JG" wrote in message
news:J8ednTRMl5onF5bVnZ2dnUVZ_gqdnZ2d@bayareasolut ions...
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 say that you cannot.
Firstly because at night you probably cannot see exactly where the horizon
is.Even if you got an aeronautical sextant with a bubble level they are very
hard to read on a boat if it is at all rough
Secondly because you cannot derive longitude without an accurate watch.


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

You do not say what you want it for. For use aboard or just as a talking
point at home?.
You can get various plastic sextants that do a good enough job for use on a
small boat where pinpoint accuracy is hard to achieve.
But a proper sextant is a thing of beauty and mine is a Kelvin Hughes dating
from 1959 which is in pristine condition in its box with all accessories. I
take the odd reading with it from time to time to keep my hand in in case
both my chartplotter and my DR on paper charts fail me. Mine is a
micrometer type but retains the silver engraved scale which is somewhat
overkill for a micrometer since you only need to use the scale to read whole
degrees. But it is very nice to look at an inlaid silver scale.
Vernier sextants are older and are collectable antiques now and regrettably
mostly end up in museums or hanging on someone's wall.
There are a lot of authentic looking but purely decorative ones about which
are not suitable for navigation. Make sure yours comes with an authentic
test certificate.