Considering ditching electronics and navigating the "old" way

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Good for you. I've never crewed large ships but been the eye balling OOD of my boats since -65, ie since I was 6yrs old. Don't get me wrong, as I like modern plotters and sh*t. What I don't like is the over confidence and CAI..

The difference in conning a several thousand ton vessel versus a 45' sailboat are so vast as to be akin to comparing driving to family sedan to driving an 18 wheeler. I can drive a car pretty well, been doing it for decades, but I would never be so arrogant as to tell big rig drivers they don't know what they're doing after an accident based on my experience driving cars no matter how long I'd been at it. Let alone pontificate on something as silly as demanding they use a specific method of navigating in order to avoid a collision with another vehicle. Don't be that guy.
By the way, if you've ever actually navigated a large ship going at any appreciable speed using celestial you would know that you have very little time to "look outside" because you're spending it all heads down in reduction tables! Don't get me wrong, I think learning celestial navigation is a neat historical skill. However it's absurd to claim that purposely not using the best technology available to increase situational awareness and instead using a time consuming and archaic method makes one safer, and patently absurd to claim that use of an archaic navigation technology would avoid collisions which have nothing to do with navigation! We used to fly by NDBs and believe it or not, celestial navigation for oceanic crossings. Would you advocate we throw away glass cockpits, inertial nav and GPS, and go back to celestial nav to make airplanes less likely to hit one another? Makes about as much sense as saying celestial nav makes collisions less likely on ships.

[RaymondR]

There are also a lot of indicators re directions, coast lines etc these days. Aircraft flying intercontinental, electric nav lights, loom of lights from population centres etc.

[fatherchronica]

We have used celestial navigation just because we like astronomy and math. But to ditch having a GPS driven anchor alarm is crazy.

[PaulvR]

We only use celestial nav for the BIG PICTURE, accurate to within 5 or 10 miles (swinging a sextant on a heaving 30 footers deck, one arm around the mast), then the coastal navigation takes over. So for a long passage I used very few charts (1 or 2 or 3), a simple plastic Davies Mk2, current nautical almanac, Sight Reduction tables. Once you sight land, it was over to the hand-bearing compass or the RDF, depth soundings, a landfall chart, and the trusty British Admiralty Pilot book! I could always get detailed charts to any area, from within that area. go, Make a landfall, the rest happens by centuries of established practice and you will inherit everything you need to move on. (It is much cheaper and more convenient with electronics by FAR!!! Try 4 days in a gale with no sun in the day and scud every night and all your walker log impellers already eaten, or try picking your way through a dog-leg tricky inlet in the dark with depth and hand bearing compass in the rain. Wet hands on soggy charts in tight quarters on small boats in windy weather was the norm, LOVED my first SatNav which I bought off a commercial ship in Cape Town.... this old style Navigation, is why there were far fewer boats in the old days, and perhaps why we have anyone on the water nowadays..oops :-))

[abarrow]

Using paper charts and non-electronic means for navigation is a skill that interesting and satisfying. However, using it on a regular basis is a bit like current day ham radio operators who continue to use Morse code. It's a skill that might, only might, be useful some time in the future when everything else fails, but day to day it's clunky, slow and not as safe as just modern methods.

Just as the octant gave way to the sextant, GPS and other electronic tools are the next generation. They are safer, easier to use, and make sailing more accessible. Should you learn to navigate with paper charts, hand bearing compasses and a sextant (if offshore)? Absolutely yes. You should even use them from time to time to keep your skills up. There are few things more satisfying in our sport than arriving where you predicted you would arrive, after using only paper charts and your brain.

Keep in mind, however, all that time spent at the chart table has taken you away from the helm, your crewmates, and the wonderful views. That's a value judgement only you can make.

[Delphine]

Here is a great reference (Celestial Navigation Book + Exercises)

Marine Navigation Books by Dominique Prinet

[Hasbeen]

It can be rather restrictive at times.



In the 70s when most cruising yachties could not afford sat nav gear I once spent 2 days lying ahull in around the middle of the Solomon sea. A little cyclone was passing to the south. it was very rough, but worse, with no sun I could not afford to sail with too many things to hit, out of site of land.


Even worse, I spent the next 3 days also laying ahull, rather worried as there was still full cloud cover, & I had no idea of where I was.



In other parts of the world I could have got some idea using radio positioning, but that wasn't available & probably still isn't in those waters.


When the sun came out I found I was only 70 miles from where I first dropped the sails. I would have loved to be able to push a few keys & have found that out 4 days earlier.

[CaptBobR]

I was an approved instructor for USCG Celestial Navigation courses and even wrote a book about using the Ageton Method. Celestial works just fine as long as you remember the circular error of probability is more than 3 miles. Crossing the ocean, that is mostly meaningless but becomes a factor as you approach a cost

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

The difference in conning a several thousand ton vessel versus a 45' sailboat are so vast as to be akin to comparing driving to family sedan to driving an 18 wheeler. I can drive a car pretty well, been doing it for decades, but I would never be so arrogant as to tell big rig drivers they don't know what they're doing after an accident based on my experience driving cars no matter how long I'd been at it. Let alone pontificate on something as silly as demanding they use a specific method of navigating in order to avoid a collision with another vehicle. Don't be that guy.
By the way, if you've ever actually navigated a large ship going at any appreciable speed using celestial you would know that you have very little time to "look outside" because you're spending it all heads down in reduction tables! Don't get me wrong, I think learning celestial navigation is a neat historical skill. However it's absurd to claim that purposely not using the best technology available to increase situational awareness and instead using a time consuming and archaic method makes one safer, and patently absurd to claim that use of an archaic navigation technology would avoid collisions which have nothing to do with navigation! We used to fly by NDBs and believe it or not, celestial navigation for oceanic crossings. Would you advocate we throw away glass cockpits, inertial nav and GPS, and go back to celestial nav to make airplanes less likely to hit one another? Makes about as much sense as saying celestial nav makes collisions less likely on ships.

So tell this to NAVY as in some instance they obviously have no clue..

[sailorladd]

Mary Blewitt Celestial navigation....thats all I had and an old Yaesu 7 SSB receiver to calibrate my quartz wrist watch, pick up BBC etc for entertainment and weather warnings.. and I had a handheld radio direction finder and hand held compass (Davis??) to get coastal bearings and lots of charts...

[DeeBee]

With 83 other responses, I didn't read them all. But everyone who is pushing navigating by the stars, that's pretty cool, but you can use any cell phone made in the last 10 years or an old GPS device to get your position. Basically that's free. No cell service or WiFi required.

From there a little math will get you to where you want. You won't have the advantage of knowing the "landscape" of where you're going but you could get paper charts for the destination port.

[Capdave360]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Speaking as one who made ocean passages with celestial because it was all that there was, I can say that I'm glad that I know how to do it, but I'm even gladder that I don't have to any more.

Jim

Same for me. Though I have to say that now I actually enjoy using my sextant offshore to keep the GPS honest!

Paper charts are expensive. My approach is to have the minimum of small scale paper charts with paper pilots and guides. For my sextant I have paper sight reduction tables and paper almanac, and I have a standalone shortwave receiver for time ticks, and regulated watches too. If all the silicon fries, I'm going to make my harbor without (too much) drama. Meanwhile I love all the large scale charts and ease of use of my GPS/chart plotter.

[Aethelwulffe]

If old way means by a LAN (local apparent noon) then you will need a very expensive sextant vs. expensive chartplotter.
You don't need a chartplotter though. You do need some paper charts. That, a drafting compass and/or dividers and a pair of parallel rules and you can plot the lat/long from any of the several backup cheap GPS receivers you have. Actual gps receivers, not the cell-phone tower kind of course.
SeaClearII is still out there, still runs, and will run on any cheap-ass computer you can find. BSB chart files for anywhere in the world are still free to download for all regions, and those can be loaded and run to give you the best chartplotter on the planet for absolutely nothing. A hockey-puck gps receiver that hooks up to a USB connection costs about 20 bucks. Done.
Computer components that run directly off of 12V or 24V are my favorite for installing on people's boats, but as for me and my homemade sloop, I have a MK25 Davis sextant and a bunch of sight reduction tables as my ultimate backup, but I also use them during any passage. I am old school in a serious way, and I actually do lunar distance method by calculation (O.L.D.) without anything but a sextant,pad and a pencil, but it may take you a while to get to that method, and you doubtlessly have a timepiece.
American Practical Navigator is the answer to your question. It is also referred to as "Bowditch". It has the Knowledge, but not the copies of sight reduction tables and charts. Those you still need to get loaded on your kindle or whattheheck if you don't buy paper versions.


To me, most of the time, "Old school" is land navigation. That means a parallel rule set, a chart, and a hand bearing compass. Most of the time it just means staying between dayshapes and watching the range markers. Most idiots operating boats have never touched a real chart in their lives and would have no idea why watertowers and steeples are so clearly marked on them.


Lead, Log, and Lookout.

[darylat8750]

"Quote:
Originally Posted by leandroflaherty View Post
I say both. Use traditional methods so you can safely navigate without electricity, and have electronic chartplotter. For under $200ish bucks you can have an excellent setup using Opencpn and NOAA free charts. I just set up a vesa monitor 10" and a raspberry Pi running openplotter with GPS and ais for 1/10th the cost of a similar commercial system."

Don't suppose there is a how to thread on this? With ais i like the sounds of that!


I would also like to see a "How to for the computer challenged" on one of the Pi set ups. I've tried to follow a couple of threads on it but they tend to think I know way more than I do. Once they give two or more options I have no way to choose and I just get lost. A cookbook style build thread that had maybe 3 options to start like maybe:
1. least expensive way. 2. Good value but best performance with low power usage. 3. Good value with no power use consideration for power boats.
Then once you choose a number, no options. Just buy this buy that ect. Also very important to me would be a "button" to push for chart updates.

I went between N.J. and S FL. several times with charts, compass, depth sounder and speed log. When we added an ADF we felt very modern. GPS is way better and less expensive.

If you keep a paper track log even when using a chart plotter it can be nice to have if your main gps pukes out and you have to get one of the backups out.

[Dave9111]

This has to be a joke, right?



If you're going to ditch electronics, then that means no radio either? No depth finder? Back to lead lines?
He mentioned welding steel?? That's a "new" material that is costly. Shouldn't he be felling logs and sawing planks? He isn't using that evil Dacron for sails... only cotton canvas?



Navionics and a tablet is a very cheap solution for charting. They only charge once for a Navionics subscription, so you can put it on multiple devices. Put a couple devices into metal canisters (food canisters work fine). You don't want to turn on the oven and then remember your backup GPS is baking at 400 degrees. OpenCPN and downloaded charts is also cheap. But how cheap does this have to be? Unless you have free boat storage and free boat materials, a boat isn't free to begin with.