NavList:

Hello everyone,

I just want to share with the group that I am currently onboard the Norwegian cruise line “Joy” doing the Atlantic crossing from Miami to London (Southampton). This is a non-stop cruise and will take 11 days in total.

As you can imagine, I am taking this opportunity to practice celestial navigation to the extreme, so I would like to share some of the experiences and learnings in the past few days.

As part of the equipment, I brought two sextants: A Pioneer Mark 2 classic sextant made in 1939 and a A-12 bubble sextant made around 1941, both in perfect working conditions.

The weather so far has been typical for this time of the year, going from clear to cloudy skies in a few hours.The lowest temperature has been around 45F and winds up to 30 knots.

I used both sextants during the day depending on the weather situation and the A12 exclusively at night to take advantage of the bubble horizon. Although we had some 12-15 feet waves at some points, this ship is very stable, and I had no issues in taking sights with the bubble sextant.

Luckly, I was able to practice all possible celestial navigation techniques by taking sights at sunrise, morning, noon sight, afternoon, sunset and even Lunars (between the Moon and Aldebaran). I was even able to take an afternoon sight with the moon on the southeast and sun on the southwest at the same time.

I could combine sights between the sun, moon, Venus, Jupiter and several stars. The results were within expectations with average errors of around 3 NM from the actual GPS positions.

This ship sails at about 20 knots constantly, which means that we cover 1 nautical mile every three minutes.Therefore, when taking sights of three stars or planets to get a simultaneous fix, the LOP’s must be advanced to adjust the distance covered and ship’s heading.

Also, this ship follows approximately the great circle route between Miami and London, so the heading has been changing every day from northeast to approximately due east. Since I could not follow the time of every heading change, when taking sights a few hours apart some LOP’s advancing errors might have been introduced.

As a summary, it has been a great experience so far, and it is great to see that all the hours of study at home and practice from the South Florida’s beaches were worth it.

Below there is a picture of myself with the Pioneer sextant, and my current position.

Thanks !

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