Considering ditching electronics and navigating the "old" way

[Apollo366]

Originally Posted by Bycrick

Crawford’s Mariner's CelestialNavigation is another good one. Once you know how to do it on paper, StarPath's app for the iPhone/iPad makes it much faster. That allows you to take a dozen sites a minute apart, reduce them all, and derive the best position. That makes the sextant work even easier.

I can only find the Game Starpaths, is there another Navigation app?

Thanks,
Wayne

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Culwatty

so getting a bit restless, don't want to spend mega bucks upgrading charts on the plotter 2019 currently, have navionics and a few others.



But for the days when I'm eventually on the big blue, I'd like to be able to navigate without the electronics?



And good books for a total novice? Or good youtube channels?



Hoping to get most of the welding dont to actually sail her before winter....

Celestial Navigation in a Nutshell by Hewitt Schlereth.

Which Dartmouth?

[RaymondR]

In it's day the Dutch East Indies company or V.O.C. was one of the major commercial enterprises in the world. It constituted an international trade in spices from what is now Indonesia with it's eastern trading hub in Batavia near what is now the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta.

The spice trade between the East Indies and Europe had initially been carried out overland until the Portuguese discovered a way around the bottom of Africa following which the trade was carried out by coastal sailing.

The V.O.C. then discovered that the passage from Europe to Batavia could be made much faster by rounding South Africa then setting off across the southern Indian Ocean to the West Coast of what is now Australia then north to Batavia.

Unfortunately, without any method of ascertaining longitude, they were obliged to rely upon dead reckoning to position the turn north. The Western Australian coast and offlying islands are very low profile without any high hills which means that land is not visible from any considerable distance and a sailing vessel could easily sail onto the coast between the hours of dusk and daylight. Hence a number of fairly famous east indiaman shipwrecks on the WA coast.

There was a time when the international sea trade of the world and the maritime fate of nations depended upon dead reckoning.

[Squanderbucks]

The sea floor is littered with old sailors who were “real men” who sailed by looking at the stars and putting their finger to the wind. It is one thing to day sail around the sound or along the beach using “eyeball” navigation but putting yourself and others at risk by taking the tract you are thinking about is reckless IMO.

It’s one thing to build a boat without power tools or a nice bookshelf. But not taking others away from land on voyages with no technology.

Not to say it can’t be done but those that did didn’t all make it back and those that did were highly trained and apprenticed with the proper timepieces and sextant, reference books , A library of charts , etc. None of which are cheap. Likely for most it was state of the art of the time.

Stick to day sailing if you can’t afford to do it safely. Or at least go to a classic navigation school or program and get certified in celestial navigation.

Up to date electronic charts covering many regions are available for a couple of hundred dollars each. If you were wanting to plan a circumnavigation going the old fashioned way the cost of the electronic charts would be the least portion I would guess.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by IslandInfedel

(
...)


I see zero use, outside of nav education for new sailors, for a paper chart, I see many disadvantages.


(...)

It is imho a 100% valid statement on any social media place.


barnakiel

[Draughty]

Hi all,
I have all the Au 800 series and some 200 series paper charts of the east coast of Oz from Sydney north to the Flinders Islands. I recently went through the exercise (thank Covid for the spare time!) of checking ALL the NTM's for these charts back to 2015. Hardly any were really important for a shallow draft recreational boat. Many just amended light visibility a mile or two, or inserted soundings of say 23 metres in a 30-50 metre contour.
The few important ones are easily noted on the paper chart.
With my SOB/cMap laptop I I just add an annotated waypoint for important ones.
Works for me for minimal outlay.
Rgds

[barnakiel]

Binary thinking has been found to be the source of many accidents in aviation and shipping.


barnakiel

[Bycrick]

StarPilot is the name of the app. It’s sold through Starpath. Sorry for the confusion. There are other apps that are cheaper, but I haven’t tried them. I’d bought the TI-89 versión years ago, and used it until the calculator itself quit. At that point, I was well into iOS apps, so just carried forward.

[clakiep]

Originally Posted by Culwatty

so getting a bit restless, don't want to spend mega bucks upgrading charts on the plotter 2019 currently, have navionics and a few others.

But for the days when I'm eventually on the big blue, I'd like to be able to navigate without the electronics?

And good books for a total novice? Or good youtube channels?

Hoping to get most of the welding dont to actually sail her before winter....

Well, it is a lot more pleasure and entertainig to navigate without electronics. Problem is that if You get in trouble You might feel guilty or be blamed, for if having it desaster could have been avoided. But knowing how to do it - dead reckoning, celestial, etc... is an excellent idea as back up, for electronics can fail without much warning. And doing it You will be a much more cautious navigator, ocasionally prefering to stay out at sea in order to approach a shore only at daylight.

Capt. Claus - ocean tramp of the eighties

[GILow]

Originally Posted by Culwatty

so getting a bit restless, don't want to spend mega bucks upgrading charts on the plotter 2019 currently, have navionics and a few others.

But for the days when I'm eventually on the big blue, I'd like to be able to navigate without the electronics?

And good books for a total novice? Or good youtube channels?

Hoping to get most of the welding dont to actually sail her before winter....

ElPinguino's (CF Member) infamous tome...

Simple Celestial https://www.dropbox.com/s/a5blh1rgvi...ation.pdf?dl=0

It must be ok, he seems to make it home on most journeys.

[alctel]

Someone just finished a non-stop RTW using only celestral nav
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...rney-1.5655143

It's fun using celestral nav (and a nice skill to have in your back pocket) but electronic charts are soooo nice. Especially for pilotage.

[Kiwi.]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Barnakiel is exactly right! I love traditional navigation, but it's too expensive! And not enough space to store all the charts.

That being said, I guess I have 200kg of paper charts on board, stuffed under every bunk But even that doesn't nearly cover my cruising area. And let's not even get started on keeping them all updated. Electronic nav is far cheaper, and more convenient.

Absolutely agree. We were meant to head to New Caledonia in May and we're still in Queensland (not a bad place to be stuck). In March I spent over $1000 replacing my few limited Pacific paper charts (bad unnecessary habit) and much less updating my complete coverage electronic charts. I already owned every paper chart I needed but I haven't spent every day of my life receiving "notices to mariners" for twenty countries and carefully updating my paper charts. So I've wasted my $1000 on paper charts whereas my electronic charts are updating regularly for the next few years.

[fred4936]

I grew up reading books by Slocum, Know-Johnston, etc. So I have a built in bias towards celestial. I took a course many years ago, and have actually done a sight. My sailing area has land to the south, so I rarely practice it, and have forgotten most of it. Have always used paper charts. Still on my do list to master celestial, once we do get offshore. I had Loran C when it was being used, but still used paper charts These days my wife and I both have nav apps on phones and IPads, as have a chartplotter on board. I have Open CPN on my laptop, which I like since the screen is much larger. I still confirm using paper charts. So i would get a compass and a chart or charts of your local area, study them, and go sailing! Navigation is extremely important, but do not let lack of electronics stop you from sailing. Have a VHF on board and a depth sounder. In a few years the electronics will all be different, so revisit when you are ready.

[rslifkin]

With electronics, sometimes it's easy to get lost in the "ooh, that's cool" and "that would be nice to have". In reality, if you put some thought into it, you can probably come up with a fairly basic, inexpensive, easy to maintain setup that'll meet your needs (and be far more practical than not having it).

[Maka]

I love my plotter. Visible from the helm I always know where I am in relation to my plotted course.
I always keep the appropriate paper chart below and mark my location on it at least once a day.

Should I lose my plotter, or a solar flare knock out GPS satellites, I have a good starting point to begin dead reckoning and celestial navigation.

Close to land my Radar can identify coast lines on my charts for confirmation.

I'm not overly concerned with updating paper charts.You could successfully navigate the Pacific Northwest today, avoiding bumping into land, with the charts Capt Vancouver made in the 1790s.