NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: I couldn't resist!
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Oct 19, 10:51 -0700
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Oct 19, 10:51 -0700
Right -- I should have added "took shot at sea" as one of the primary reasons.
From: Apache Runner <apacherunner@gmail.com>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 10:37 AM
Subject: [NavList] Re: I couldn't resist!
I suspect more one of two plausible problems for Dias. The Portuguese in that period had a modified astrolabe. Rather than being filled up with a star finder and a projection of altitutde/azimuth coordinates, it had four cut-outs on it to limit wind buffeting. Still, they got buffeted by the wind.I don't know offhand whether Dias went ashore to take the sighting, but it's possible in my thinking that he might have taken it on ship-board, and the instrument got pushed around in the course of taking the shot, and he didn't notice this. It was at a time when the techniques were still in their infancy.
