NavList:

Hello Joshua,

You will probably get many methods for the reduction (and hopefully similar answers) to your Sextant Observation.

What I did was use Bill Ritchie's - Astron to fill in the page with the data you provided. The only piece of information sort of missing was the UT Date. You mentioned the sight happened near sunset on Friday the 6th Feb 2026, so because Washington State is currently -8 hours to Greenwich, the UT timing you gave I assume is for *Saturday* the 7th Feb 2026 (UT).

The "assumed position" I just chose randomly in the middle of Puget Sound, this then gave an intercept of 19 Nautical Miles to the Ho from your timed observation of Kochab. I then adjusted the Assumed Position latitude by 19 minutes of arc. This gave a final Latitude of 47° 30' at your location.

Going then to Google Maps, I observed (at this Latitude) there are not many places where there is a 4.7 Nautical Miles of clear water to the horizon to the *North* of the latitude line of 47° 30' in Puget Sound. The 4.7 Nautical Miles comes from the ASTRON page from your 16 foot observer height.

Assuming your observation was done on land, my best guess at the Longitude, would be somewhere near the Ferry Dock, at the North End of Vashon Island. So I reckon your were within a few miles of

North 47° 30.6' , West 122° 27.8'  is this close Joshua - did you get GPS coordinates when you did your observation ?

Regards, Geoff Hitchcox, Christchurch, New Zealand.