"Skipper" wrote in message
...
DSK wrote:

Skipper wrote:
Here's the situation: You're 100 miles offshore and bailing to the
liferaft. You've become disoriented and have lost your bearings. You
reach for the GPS-12 and find it's DOA. Among your options is the sun
compass. Do you know how to make and use one?

Yes. Do you?

To make an accurate sun compass requires an almanac and a
watch. With a protractor, you could improvise if you had a
good idea of the current declination of the sun.

It's based loosely on the concept that the sun rises in the
east and sets in the west, and at local noon will be either
directly south or directly north, depending on which
hemisphere you're in. With a protractor, you can draw angles
on a card (or directly on the deck) and interpolate
direction between sunrise and sunset.

You may remember the incident about a year ago where a fellow on the
West Coast lost all power and drifted for weeks off the Mexican coast
because he'd lost his bearings and had no idea where North was.
Knowledge of the sun compass method would have allowed him to ID North
and sail quickly to shore.

The point of this thread is to remind us of the easy to learn sun
compass skill for determining North.

--
Skipper



He could not find his way to an Island 26 miles away, that can be seen from
the mainland. He could have looked at the sunrise and figured out which way
the closest land was. And he is going to be able to improvise a compass?