NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Brian Walton
Date: 2020 Oct 20, 07:45 -0700
David C,
Thank you.
A gale, and Corvid-19 lockdown now make Wales a “lee shore.”
My normal home is only 11 miles from the Greenwich Meridian. The EOT, almanacs starting at midday, and sextant errors may explain why I often end up in the wrong hemisphere when reworking old-fashioned time shots. I was fretting over the maths of versiines, when maybe logic was at fault.
Half the boys in the bombed out street where I grew up couldn’t read or write; 3 generations ago, it would have been worse.
If you stuck to Western Atlantic summer forenoon time shots to cross with a noon lat, the use of log-versines giving hours, as did the watch and almanac, would have made it easier to memorise a routine.
We have aviators to thank for simplifying it. I don’t like radians, especially when wearing a L/J as I am now.
Of course, my great-grandfather could just ask a British flagged ship what his long was, and who was at war...
Brian Walton
