NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2025 Feb 27, 10:05 -0800
Peter Mackenzie you wrote: "Surely the lattitude values should be labelled the other way round in the image? ie: with larger angles (latitude) at the foot of the stick and smaller ones towards the top?"
Peter
I think you must take these things with a pinch of salt (water!). You are of course correct; the latitude scale is upside down. 60 should be at the bottom, but it’s worse than that. ‘Stick’ is probably the wrong word for viewing Polaris at 60N; you’re more likely to need a small oar. Try drawing it out. If your arm-stretch is 60cm, your stick would need to be a minimum of 104cm long to measure 60N using Polaris. You would also need for everyone to keep very still and hope the sea wasn’t too rough. One minor point; if the ‘stick was numbered at all, it wouldn’t have been with Arabic numerals. Some type of runic marking would have been used. I would have worn my Viking helmet for the photograph, but then I remembered we’d left them inside TIKI when we sold her. I’ll try my ‘stick’ tonight if it’s clear and there’s not too much light pollution over Lincoln. DaveP
