NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Zone Time -- longitudinal or political?
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Jun 8, 02:00 EDT
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 Jun 8, 02:00 EDT
"Does the cruising navigator need 3 watches? One to keep GMT, one to keep Zone Time, and one to keep "shore time"?" Yes. The ritual for late 20th century time-keeping at sea is to keep Zone Time based on those 15 degree bands and ignore the political time zones and the date line until you step on shore (or more likely, you enter territorial waters and have to deal with the locals). It's really the only thing that works if your intend to keep any sort of zone time at all. There's no technical or navigational reason to bother with zone time. It's more about sticking to a common standard for shipboard clocks and watches --so that you know when to report for duty and when lunch is served. In the 19th century, it was normal to use Local Apparent Time, updated from noon to noon, as shipboard time. -FER 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W. www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
