NavList:

Joe Wong, you wrote "I was wondering if anyone here like the idea of using a stopwatch to register time of sights".

Yes, that's exactly what I do, but with a considerable less fancy stopwatch than yours. I find it easy to hold both sextant and a mechanical analog stopwatch in my right hand (I'm ashore rather than afloat), and start the stopwatch with my thumb when I think the sight is as accurate as it's going to get. Then I put the sextant down, look at my quartz analog watch, wait unitl the second hand reaches 0, and stop the stopwatch. Adding the minutes from the watch to the seconds form the stopwatch gives m the time of the sight. 

I wish I could say that I came up with the idea of using a stopwatch myself; I read that a stopwatch may be used if no assistant is available in a little book on celestial navigation by Jeff Toghill, but developed the details of the technique as best as I could. If anyone uses a better method, I would be interested in hearing about it.  I'm not surprised that Bowditch has no refrences to a stopwatch: it's written primarily for readers who have many assistants around, ready and willing to look at a deck watch at a moment's notice. Not my case.

Regards,

RafaelC