NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Questions about Celestial Navigation
From: Francis Upchurch
Date: 2018 Sep 12, 18:55 +0100
From: Francis Upchurch
Date: 2018 Sep 12, 18:55 +0100
Read David Lewis "We the navigators". I re-read most of Cook on this and think he was mightily impressed with the Polynesian navigation techniques. Most of my sailing is local and the navigation mostly coastal pilotage. Transit marks are often more accurate than GPS. Experience, feel and "smell" seem to get me out of most tight situations. I very rarely need GPS check. Radar is good though with rocks and fishing boats all around. Cook managed without that. So did I 20 years ago. Have a good look out. Number one eyeball. For ocean sailing, the Polynesian mental star maps they memorised seem unbelievable, but they did get there and return and get there again. So something must have worked. They also knew the prevailing winds, currents and animal behaviour. The "smell" of the thing. Gut feel is I agree with Geoffrey. I have seen this in all branches of life, medicine etc. Humans often outperform what we expect from objective science data. Humans did a lot of ocean sailing hundreds of years before Cook and modern CN became available. It worked whatever they did. Actions speak louder than words. More to life than scientific "facts". Maybe we have not yet discovered all the "facts". Best wishes Francis
