NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Marty Lyons
Date: 2015 Nov 8, 14:57 -0800
I use a slightly different technique. I have a mechanical stopwatch on a lanyard around my neck. I also wear a digital quartz watch on my wrist set to UTC. While taking a sight I hold the stopwatch in the hand operating the drum micrometer. At the time of coincidence, I start the stopwatch. I then leisurely place the sextant on a safe place. I then observe the quartz wristwatch and at any even minute of UTC, I stop the mechanical stopwatch. I record the time of the even UTC minute from the wristwatch and the stopwatch interval from the time of sight to the even minute. I then proceed to take a few more sights. Later I subtract the intervals from the even minutes to get my actual UTC time of sights. Usually my interval in putting the sextant down to the next even minute, ranges from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. You must remember to reset the stopwatch to zero after each shot. In recording the information, I always round up to the next higher second on the stopwatch, to account for my reaction time. So 17.3 seconds is recorded as 18 seconds.
