NavList:

Frank,

Thank you for your quick response on expected accuracy in this response. Under good conditions, achieve Lunar measurement +/-0.2' which equates to +/- 24 Time seconds.  And the proof of the pudding was that they regularly did Lunars, and wouldn't have it for so long if they didn't think it was useful.

Regarding van der Werf's article. What I quoted was a copy and paste from the article. And, van der Werf was clearly quoting from Slocum's book, not from his logs. And there was some guess work involved. I hear what you are saying. It wasn't primary source and hence a lot of doubts.

I took your Lunars class because I saw that learning to sight and then Clear Lunars would give gave me an opportunity to practice sight taking on land on my patio (weather dependent) when my sailboat is layed up for the winter. It was to improve my sextant skills. And I've done quite a few Lunar sights since the class. Now I'm trying to convince others to pick it up. I do get some pushback, and that's why my questions. I liked your additional response that Lunars can also be used to validate sextant accuracy. I'll be curious to learn more about how to, "calibrate your sextant's arc correction by shooting lunars". Just one more thing to practice using my sextant.

Sorry, I'm so used to saying UTC because it is today's nomenclature. I'll try to remember to use Greenwich Time when talking Historic practice.