NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Steve E. Bryant
Date: 2020 Apr 7, 21:57 -0700
Prior to That Photo, I knew nothing of NavList. I was minding my own business flipping through whatever was popping up on the FaceBook. I saw "that picture" and recognized something familiar about it. Upon close inspection and contemplation after 12 hours or so, I realized the driveway [to the left of the house in the photo] lead to the little fishing pier in Noank, CT that was the favorite pier to which I took my children fishing and seineing for crabs when we lived in Connecticut ca 1984. The street/driveway was a block away from where I bought my 1971 copy of American Practical Navigator, Volume 1 at a tag sale (I paid way too much for it). I messaged the author of the post, Frank, and I've been listening in 'now and again' to the amazing conversations on the NavList ever since. A few years after that in 2014, my wife and I chartered out of Brenton Cove, Fort Adams, Newport. We met Frank at Simpatico's and toured Jamestown to Beaver Tail and beautiful sights in between. That was one of our best vacations ever.
I like to tell that story calling up the power of one's ability to recognize bits and pieces in a small, random photo which brings back fond memories and my good fortune in finding the Navlist community. I do hope I'm not found too far off topic.
Steve OCBC/USPS
PS: That trip included one of Frank's two-day navigation classes at Mystic Seaport. I encourage anyone who has the chance to attend his classes to be sure and not miss it.
PSS: This is not the actual FB photo, below, that I recognized from FB but it is the broad Google Earth street view of the road leading to the Noank Pier just past the Historical Socity Building where the plaque donated by the navigators of NavList commemorating Amelia Earhart now resides.