On Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:19:51 +0700, Bruce In Bangkok
wrote:

I seem to recall a comment about the minute hand falling off of his watch.

That would screw up your noon sights a bit.

One of the nice things about a noon sight is that your time does not
have to be dead nuts accurate. You just keep shooting the suns
altitude until it peaks out and then you can compute latitude directly
from that if you know what the date is.

Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:19:51 +0700, Bruce In Bangkok
wrote:

I seem to recall a comment about the minute hand falling off of his watch.
That would screw up your noon sights a bit.

One of the nice things about a noon sight is that your time does not
have to be dead nuts accurate. You just keep shooting the suns
altitude until it peaks out and then you can compute latitude directly
from that if you know what the date is.

By coincidence, I read about half of Slocum at the beginning of the
summer as a "Kindle Test." (I since got one and have read about a dozen
books; highly recomended since it comes with with lifetime internet.) I
was about a page shy of the lunar sight mention, the only reference to
celestial in the book. Slocum was 47 days out of Juan Fernandez,
approaching the Marquesas, and wanted to check his dead reckoning. His
first Lunar Distance sight was off by 200 miles, so he tried again and
again was way off. He then went into the tables and found a flaw, which
when corrected, placed him 5 miles off the DR. Not bad for 47 days. He
continued on to Samoa without stopping.

He never mentions any other celestial, and only has a cheap tin clock.
However, he did have a patent log spinning off the stern, so he has a
good measure of speed/distance. He does mention the Lunars are a lost
art, now that chronometers are commonplace. A few years later radio
time signals would completely eliminate the need for Lunars.