NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: I knew where we were, but where are we now?
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2006 Jun 25, 22:25 +1000
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2006 Jun 25, 22:25 +1000
Lu Abel wrote: > If you look at Chapter 24 of Bowditch as mentioned in my previous post, > the most accurate sailing is a Mercator sailing. > Mercator Sailings rely on Table 6 of Bowditch, Meridional Parts. Almost correct. The most accurate uses tables of meridional parts AND meridional distances. Having said that, if Guy wants to concentrate on one calculation method, then he could do worse than settle on Middle Latitude. But nobody has mentioned the other quick and reliable method that is accurate enough for practical purposes, and offers other advantages that calculation methods cannot. Plot it. On the chart if you must (barbarian). Preferably on the succession of plotting sheets that track your progress. The big advantage is that it provides a picture (quite literally) thus showing you just where you are in a spatial two-dimensional sense: much more valuable than numbers that you are then most likely to plot onto paper anyway. I think of plotting as a primary method and calculation as a back-up or check method.
