NavList:

I have begun planning a "Navigation Weekend" conference tentatively scheduled for October of this year in the charming town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. The conference will be hosted, we hope, at Northeast Maritime Institute, a professional maritime training school, where I have been teaching recently. NMI is just down the street from the spot where Joshua Slocum built (or re-built) the Spray, the little boat he sailed single-handed around the globe in the 1890s. Fairhaven is across the Acushnet River estuary from New Bedford, home to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and its vast collections of artifacts and logbooks from the great age of American whaling as well as one of the largest commercial fishing fleets today in the United States. It's conveniently located, about 45 minutes from Green Airport just outside Providence, Rhode Island and about 70 minutes from Logan Airport in Boston. For those of you who attended gatherings at Mystic Seaport in earlier years, Fairhaven is about 80 minutes east of Mystic. Dates near October 13-15 look good. Any thoughts?

For those of you who have not heard of these famous conferences, I'll point you to the web page for the gathering in 2008 and also the meeting in 2010.

We have already decided on a central topic and focus for this conference: 21st Century Celestial Navigation. Any topics related to celestial navigation and traditional navigation, including history, might be suitable for presentations, but the primary goal of the conference will be to address the purpose of celestial navigation and the tools, and skills required to make it work in the year 2017 and beyond. 

While this will be a great opportunity to meet and get to know NavList members in person, we anticipate that NavList will be at most half of this gathering. Please note that I expect that there will be a modest attendance fee, on the order of $50. Details on this and more will follow later in the Spring.

Frank Reed
ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island, New England

PS: Mirabile dictu, I am also now an "official" USCG approved celestial navigation instructor. You can get licensed by taking one of my classes at NMI. I also have a full slate of celestial navigation classes this Spring at Mystic Seaport (for learning, not for licensing) including a few new classes and several expanded programs which you can read about at ReedNavigation.com.