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Re: Coast Navigation School
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2025 Apr 11, 20:20 -0700

I called Debbie B right away when I saw her note. She now lives in Hawaii about a dozen miles from the spot where James Cook was killed. She told a fascinating and wonderful and also tragic story of her father's last year.

Captain Simonsen and his wife --Debbie's father and mother-- sold the business and announced to their daughters that they would be moving first to Antigua and then sailing the Atlantic to Mallorca in the Mediterranean. She described watching him take sights and working up his sights to get their position as they voyaged. From Antigua they sailed first west to Nassau. Their boat, a 56-foot ketch, I think she said, named Honeybird, was hauled out in Florida. For Debbie, at age 13, it was a grand adventure ...once she got over sea sickness. Eventually they sailed on to Bermuda and the Azores and then to Mallorca. They lived for a while in Port d'Andratx (Catalan so the "tx" is like "ch" in "church") which must have been wonderfully quaint and beautiful fifty years ago. Captain Simonsen had apparently been sick for some time, perhaps told he would not live long, and he passed away very soon after they arrived in Mallorca. Debbie says he is buried there.

She remembers the thriving navigation business and recalls that her mother, who was English, was a skilled promoter and publicist. I told her that I have two Simex sextants just downstairs, and that Simex sextants remain quite popular. Of course, she was pleased to hear that. And I described the "family lineage" of these instruments, apparently produced to Simonsen's order by Tamaya.

Simonsen and his Coast Navigation School were featured in TIME magazine back in 1968. I posted an image of that article four years ago. I'm including it again below.

The story of the life of Captain Simonsen would make a great movie, I think. Anyone out there want to greenlight that project? All it takes is money... Lots of money... :)

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island, North America

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