NavList:

My first sextant sights, in the summer of 1978, were on Davis Mk 15 sextants and Tamaya Venus sextants (unless there was a different, almost identical model earlier). Both of these were standard student sextants for the regular 10-week long celestial navigation classes taught by Don Treworgy and Sue Howell at the "Seaport Planetarium", now "Treworgy Planetarium", at Mystic Seaport back then. There are still a half-dozen there, in decent condition, mostly used for classroom demonstration.

The "talk" around those scaled-down Tamayas implied that the "Venus" model was marketed as a "female" sextant. It was a bit smaller, lighter, and of course the name says it, too. A difference in size of an "eighth" is barely noticeable on first glance, but they require less effort to support, and that's usually a good thing. Smaller is also better for storage. The standard cases they ship in are even more compact than that 12.5% would suggest. As for navigation quality, you can't go wrong with an original Tamaya.

Frank Reed