NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Nautical Almanac Usage
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2004 Oct 22, 17:06 -0500
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2004 Oct 22, 17:06 -0500
Herbert, Could you state at least ONE reason for buying the Government vs commercial edition? I am just curious. Alex. On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Herbert Prinz wrote: > Marc and Fred, > > Amazing. You guys must have special connections to Washington! Did you order > directly from the GPO? Admittedly, my "survey" is four days old. Last > Monday, the Almanac was not yet in the stores of the agents in Connecticut, > Rhode Island or Florida. I tried several ones. The commercial edition was > readily available, but the government edition was "expected to arrive soon", > without specific deadline. The explanation I got was that there was a > distribution problem at the GPO. So, I thought I didn't need to poll list > members individually for my little statistics. > > At any rate, almanacs used to come out three years ahead of time. What > prevents the government from keeping up this practice? For a moment, let's > forget the small boaters on extended passages and circumnavigations, or > those who want to plan their next sailing vacation around a solar eclipse. I > wonder whether the navy uses the almanacs at all. How are they distributed > at the last moment to all the deployed navy ships? > > Of course, it could be that the navy already has their copies and the > government only blocks distribution to the general public in the interest of > homeland security. As we all know, terrorists are nowadays the number one > beneficiaries of almanacs. > > Herbert Prinz >