NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Sights with Davis Mk 15
From: Frank A
Date: 2022 Dec 21, 11:25 -0800
From: Frank A
Date: 2022 Dec 21, 11:25 -0800
Happy December solstice and happy advance holidays to you all 🎄. I've been a list member for a while, but I haven't posted until recently. I learned how to sail in Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i in the late '90s. I've wanted to learn celestial navigation ever since. I even had a fellow active duty military friend in Hawai'i who happened to learn celestial navigation in the Coast Guard. He said he would teach me, but we partied so much, we never made time for CelNav lessons.
Fast forward over a couple decades and many moves later, I finally picked up my first sextant seven days ago here in Southern California. I've been practicing taking sights since. Please excuse this newbie question. This morning, I finally took a sun sight (to a nearby roof) in which the vernier scale lined up at the fifth and last short line on the bottom of the vernier scale. The Davis User's Guide states that each short line equals 0.2 minutes. Therefore I assess this to mean that the fifth short line would be 1 full minute that must be added to the minutes reading on the micrometer drum. Please look at the photo and tell me if I'm reading this correctly:
13° 3.0'.
25 minutes later, I took another sight (but to a different higher roof). It was almost on the 17° line on the arc, but just to the right of the line. I read this as:
16° 0.6' or 16° 0' 36".
(Or is this 17° 0.6' or 17° 0' 36" because it's so close to the line on the arc?)
Please take a look at the photos and let me know if I'm wrong. Thanks in advance and thank you all for the informative posts on this list.
Fair winds, following winds, and clear skies,
Frank A.
File:
File:
