On Wed, 03 Sep 2003 14:19:57 -0400, DSK wrote:

felton wrote:

I am wrestling with myself as to whether to continue my USPS course
work and sign up for the JN course, which is the first of two courses
dealing with celestial navigation.

What are your sailing/cruising goals? If you are planning on doing any
extended cruising, then you should know as much about navigation as you
can learn (ditto about electricity, engines, etc etc). Knowledge is power!

While I agree with your premise, I am really trying to determine if my
time would be better spent learning something more likely to have some
use to me. I tend to believe that celestial is so far down the list
of skills that *might* be useful, that perhaps my time would be better
invested in an amateur radio license, for example. There must be
other ways to improve myself in some way that may be useful, rather
than just interesting.



I have completed all the electives
and through Advanced Piloting, so it is decision time. I have heard
that even the Naval Academy doesn't teach celestial navigating skills
any longer.

This is misleading. Graduating cadets are not expected to navigate ships,
but line officers are. The celestial nav courses were moved to an
appropriate curriculum for post grads, whereas cadets had three or four
other hard courses shoved in.



Is celestial anything more than an interesting exercise these days or
is it worth the effort to learn for any meaningful use?

If it keeps you from being lost at sea after your GPS is either fried,
dropped, or soaked, then clestial skills (even if it is only shooting sun
lines) will bring your butt into port alive.

True enough, but it seems likely that I could counter those risks more
easily than learning celestial navigation, but I do concede that it
would be useful in those circumstances.


Ultimately it
comes down to time invested/benefit to learn, like anything else.

At the risk of sounding "lubberly", I just wonder if this is time well
spent these days.

Personally, I count all knowledge as a net gain. YMMV.

I do too, but I haven't signed up for piano lessons, either


Fresh Breezes- Doug King