NavList:

Mordris, you wrote:
"Your Lunar experience is unique, because the observation is taken at sea on board the ship."

Hmmm. Bear in mind, it's a massive cruise ship with built-in stability (modern cruise ships are very stable for passenger comfort). The comparison with traditional lunars is "tricky".

You added:
"I will speculate: you may be the only person on our planet practicing lunars at sea."

I think you might be surprised then. I get emails roughly two to ten times a year from people experimenting (playing with) lunars at sea. Maybe half are from navigators aboard yachts and ocean-going sailing vessels. About a quarter are taken from commercial vessels (container ships). And the remainder are, like Martin's case, from passengers experimenting aboard regular cruise ship sailings. But there's certainly a very real possibility that your comment is true if we limit it to this week specifically. The number of people messing around with lunars on the ocean is low enough that Martin may indeed be the only one anywhere shooting a lunar out of sight of land this week! And I would emphasize here that all of these cases are strictly enthusiasts getting pleasure or "challenge" from lunars. Naturally they serve no practical purpose.

You may wonder... why don't we hear of these lunar experiments at sea (that I mentioned above) more often? It's important to remember that celestial navigation generally, and lunars even more so, are hobbies for a particular sort of person. Independence, even to the point of non-social behavior, is common. Playing with a sextant on land or at sea is a last refuge for the solitary experimenter, a hobby that promotes a certain hermit-like attitude. You yourself have written about the "devotional" aspect of shooting lunars, and I think that's part of it. It's a quiet, solitary pleasure! This can be a little disappointing for those of us who like to communicate about the subject, but that's been the way of it for decades.

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA