Help with sextant advice

[CarinaPDX]

Tamaya sextants were very popular in the '70s and '80s. They sold a small 3/4 size sextant, a standard 7/8 size (Jupiter) and a premium 7/8 (Spica). They are very high quality, and at a more attractive price than the German ones. I picked up a Jupiter while in Japan on business, and really like the quality feel to it. Also, its corrections are all zero's. (Every sextant should come with a label inside the box that states the corrections that need to be applied for various angles - it used to be very unusual to have all zeros.)

Unfortunately it is not always easy to tell the condition of a used sextant. The big concern is that it may have been dropped at some point, resulting in errors. The proper thing to do is to send it to an optics lab to have it checked and the corrections updated if necessary, but that may be a bit too expensive for most.

Greg

[barnakiel]

Dirt cheap plastic ones are fine to learn. They are also good backups.


My advice for sextant buyers - get a LIGHT one. A light sextant. Avoid heavy units.


Imho USD 500-1000 is a good price bracket. Beyond 1000 USD it is all about having a toy to play with. If you are wealthy and like nice objects, a sextant is one such object.



Good stuff, imho:



E.g.
https://www.celestaire.com/product/astra-iiib-sextant/


I would also take any s/h Tamaya 733 or similar. These also come below 1000 USD when s/h.




barnakiel (sextant: a German aluminum sextant painted gray).

[Lake-Effect]

Like most others, my path has been: a Davis MK 15 plastic sextant to learn with, and if/when I get any good with it, I will then consider a "real" metal sextant.

The Davis plastic sextants have jumped in price since I got one, but I see that Celestaire has a sale on them. Also, since there are many punters like me who get one and either lose interest, or progress to a metal one, you can probably find a used one at a flea market or ebay.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by captmikem

Benz,
Not trying to stir thing up here but I disagree with you. I say this from experience as I was second officer for many years and took thousands of sights which the ship relied on.

I always used a telescope for the sun and moon as it magnifies it greatly and you can define the lower or upper limb precisely.

I normally took the telescope off for star and planet sights as a point of light is just a point of light. Easier to find without a scope. You can preset your HS to the star (easy if you use HO 249) or, I would see the star I wanted, hold the sextant upside down and bring the horizon up to it.

As for sextants, I have used a number of them, my favorites are Freirberger (small, light, and durable), Plath, Tamaya.

I have a plastic one but have not used it much so I can not say anything about it. But, I would suggest to the OP, a lot of folks want to learn celestial, get started then kind of fade out. I think a plastic one would be a good start, then if you find you really like it, invest in a good used sextant as it will give you better sights and confidence. Also, I think it was Bowditch who said it takes a thousand sights before you can accurately start relying on your sights. This number seems large but is not. I always shot a body 3 times and averaged the time and the sight to reduce errors, when you are shooting half a dozen stars in the morning, any planets up, 10am sun line, noon sight, 4pm sun line, and evening stars, you quickly reach that number.

Good luck, and if you can find Mary Blewitt's book it will help you a lot.

M

Thanks for the no-telescope idea--I'll have to try it. With my bad eyesight, I usually focus the telescope so that I can shoot without eyeglasses, otherwise a point of light may not even be a blur. But I might try eyeglasses/sight tube. I have a hard time using binoculars with glasses also--I usually tune the focus so that I can take off the spectacles, which makes for some awkward juggling.
Maybe I'll just get Lasik...

[CarinaPDX]

Not all telescopes are the same. My Tamaya Jupiter (MS-833) came with a 3.5x40 telescope. Optionally a 7x35 scope is available. And there is a simple sight tube available as well. I consider the 7x35 to be useless on a small boat. I suspect I would like the sight tube instead of going without anything, but the small scope is useful.

Going down Baja in fresh winds I had a young 3rd Mate from an ocean-going tug aboard. Just for fun one day we decided to pull out the sextant. He went first: he stood in the cockpit and did a sun sight, just as he would on the tug I suppose. Then he drew some lines on a blank paper, looked up in the almanac and H.0. 229, and had the result in a flash. It was miles off. I went forward and sat with my back against the mast and my elbows on my knees, and took my sight. Then for minutes I struggled to fill out the USPS Sight Reduction form, which I hadn't done for years. The Mate got impatient, did his blank paper trick, and found my sight to be almost exactly one mile off. We were both happy to put that exercise behind us...

Greg

[billgewater]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

If you are serious about learning and using I would suggest a Freiberger from India... (or elsewhere)

Excellent sextants.... the ones coming out of the Indian breakers' yards were most likely supplied to ships built in the 90's and have possibly never been used in anger... probably less risk of damage than buying a high end one from a private buyer...

There seem to be a number (3?) of Indian dealers who have the sextant market covered and have 100% good feedback on the 'bay....

NB .. this advice is worth just what you payed for it...

Re the Indian sextants. My own original sextant is in storage but it was English built and it was "Renegraved in 1912" by a company in Fenchurch St. London. It was used by a family shipping company and was given to me in the late 1960's. It still worked, but the optics were certainly not great. I have seen the same model in maritime museums.
However, exact replicas of this same model sextant regularly appear on Indian websites. I have even seen a miniature of the same sextant in a car boot sale market. Do the replicas work? Probably, but are they easy to use? Not in my experience. India has a thriving brass artifact market.
Besides the experience of using such an historical instrument, I can't really see why you really want one on a boat. Prone to damage, expensive, don't work in cloudy weather or rough seas and it can take ages to get a chart line. Remember that a sextant won't give you a position from one sighting whereas a much cheaper hand help GPS will give you a continuous position update.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by billgewater

Re the Indian sextants. My own original sextant is in storage but it was English built and it was "Renegraved in 1912" by a company in Fenchurch St. London. It was used by a family shipping company and was given to me in the late 1960's. It still worked, but the optics were certainly not great. I have seen the same model in maritime museums.
However, exact replicas of this same model sextant regularly appear on Indian websites. I have even seen a miniature of the same sextant in a car boot sale market. Do the replicas work? Probably, but are they easy to use? Not in my experience. India has a thriving brass artifact market.
Besides the experience of using such an historical instrument, I can't really see why you really want one on a boat. Prone to damage, expensive, don't work in cloudy weather or rough seas and it can take ages to get a chart line. Remember that a sextant won't give you a position from one sighting whereas a much cheaper hand help GPS will give you a continuous position update.

Yes but.....
The OP wants a proper sextant so he can learn proper navigation...

There are a lot of indian replicas on the market.... they are a waste of time ...

There are however several dealers in India who seem to have the shipbreaking yards covered... selling good Freibergers ... many at what a I think is a good price...

Search 'freiberger sextant' on Ebay..... 7 listed at the moment

[SeanPatrick]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

Not all telescopes are the same. My Tamaya Jupiter (MS-833) came with a 3.5x40 telescope. Optionally a 7x35 scope is available. And there is a simple sight tube available as well. I consider the 7x35 to be useless on a small boat. I suspect I would like the sight tube instead of going without anything, but the small scope is useful.

The 7x35 is good for things like lunars, but yes: it's pretty useless on a small boat. A sight tube is the best option for zero magnification (or 1x, as a friend of mine sometimes corrects me). It ensures your line of sight is collimated with the sextant frame, which is important for getting an accurate sight. It also helps shield your FoV from some of the glare, although not much.


The next best option would probably be a peep hole sight, followed by a sight ring or the telescope mounting ring which is present on some [mostly older] sextants. I wouldn't recommend going without any sort of sighting aid - although it is certainly possible to get perfectly good sights that way.

[NorthCoastJoe]

About seven years ago I contacted a guy who did sextant repairs. He was someplace in the midwest. He might be a good source for a used one. My fathers Cassens & Plath sextant survived a fire and I had him check it out. The case got cooked but the sextant was undamaged.

[SeanPatrick]

Robert E. White is the only guy I know of still doing sextant repairs/maintenance in the U.S.

[sv.antea]

I used plastic sexant to find my way across Atlantic before GPS. I second the fact that they work but are very sensitive to changes in temperature, the index error will be all over the place when you bump it. The biggest problem with my Davis was that after checking the index error I had to swing in a shade or two to shoot the sun and the mechanical stres changed the index error. But.
While waiting to check in at the customs dock in Bermuda I met an old timer who told me: Don't waste your time with sun sights. Shoot 4 or 5 stars, planets, even the moon after sunset every day. Two things work better that way. 1. You don't need to use the shades and so avoid that problem with plastic sextant, and 2. multiple position lines will form the "cocked hat", any sight too far off will be apparent and can be discarded. You will pretty much know you are somewhere in that cocked hat area. I also found that for the 3 week trip, I mostly shot the same stars every evening, I was able to preset the sextant angle and with the approximate previous night azimuth, the star was easy to find in the low power scope even before it can be seen by naked eye. My "cocked hat" was always less than 2 miles, typically 3/4 mile across. Of course, at the start of the crossing you choose the stars with optimal altitude and variety of azimuths.

[Offshore1960]

I have a Freiberger model Sirius that I really love and use alot. Great sextant comfortable and stable to use and very precise. Bought it years ago from an Indian shipbreaker.
I would buy another one in a heartbeat. Don't waste your time with plastic sextants. Nothing wrong with buying a good used German or Japanese sextant. Either will give you a lifetime of excellent service.