NavList:

The 19th century nav class set me thinking... normal nav day is say an east and west time sight for lon, and noon Lat. weather permitting... as per the Morgan logs we worked on.....

In prolonged bad weather sun can hide for over a week easy where storms, cold air and warm currents meet... and DR can prove tough in storms..... I understood day sights were the commonplace.... Modern dogma would use LOP's on any body we can figure when it shows....advance the improved EP and cross them as you can.. What would the decision be sitting on the whaler.....

What if you missed LAN? easy to do in crappy weather.... but finally grabbed a lone sight in the clouds at 2:30 PM local... Trying to get in the head of a whaler navigator....its more a psychological question based on what they had on hand.... Would they grab any body, would they have the almanac for stars & planets? or do I just limp until I get more info ? OR maybe its personality based..

Hypothetically...no sights in a week: 8th day...time sight late in day 4:00 catch break in clouds. calc longitude using DR latitude... a so-so position as lat is old... better than nothing for sure ..... but if storm DR were bad....oh well... next day no morning sight...but catch sun around LAN.... so I update lat and find significant error in DR lat. If weather looks good I can wait till 3 and fix time sight with updated lat.... and improve the EP ..... if it look like it might be foggy or cloudy... I could mentally go backwards up the last days DR track angle ..... correct yesterdays lat based on today's lat sight ..... then update the DR...

just wondering if that kind of thinking was commonplace or the preference would be to branch out into the less familiar other bodies........or less used alternate hours such as twilight and dawn...