NavList:

The holidays set me to this special note to all of you here. 

I just found this list this year, and feel the need to say a profound thank you for your patience and willingness to help another. Let me assure you if I have not said thank you individually for your effort, the thought and gratitude is always there. I fear troubling inboxes with more messages than necessary, as most of us have too many already. 

A special note of thanks to Frank Reed, your constant efforts here there and everywhere and superb teaching have helped immensly.  I hope to see you in more classes this spring.  

TO all:  My etiquette may be flawed.  At times I have asked questions when I should not, for perhaps with more thinking or searching the archives I could have reasoned the answer myself. (a few forehead slappers in there when I see the answer...ah..why didn't I see that).  

I perhaps have tried to contribute myself at times when I should have remained silent and let the more experienced answer.....  

Either way I always try to conduct myself with politeness and courtesy and a sense of trying to contibute back in some way. Of adding value.  Of carrying on a traditon I truly believe in.  A capability that I fear gets more diluted with the passing of time with increasing reliance on circuitry.

So I beg patience, I am always trying to balance my constant need to question everything to learn, and my desire to help, with reasoned and courteous evaluation of my own behavior adnd approriateness of my own actions. Self evalaution is a lost art today for many...but I believe it helps us in learning how to learn..and how to share with each other in harmony.

Many of you are so vastly more experienced, the questions I ask must surely seem trivial at times.  Indeed I find that had I searched old answers, I perhaps have troubled you unneccessarily, because old answers provided the clues for my own reasoning.

While I have decades of experience on the ocean in both summer and winter, wreck hunting,  scuba diving, fishing, sailing, studying the rules, etc......I had always been intimidated by the Celestial navigation mystique (to the uninitiated) and forms that looked so complicated.  Encouraged by texts and videos that made it less intimidating, and with determination, I set out to learn how to find my way around first, then gradually have progressed to trying to understand the subject far more completely. I am a mechanical engineer, and the backgorund in trig and science help.  

So thats a little about me....and a note of gratitude to you all. 

I continue to try to learn something new each week. I like to understand not just how to do something, but "why" it works.  I want to understand it so well, I can use my knowledge to recreate the formula i forget.  Or the ability to come up with innovative solutions when faced with non standard situations (this has saved my bacon on the ocean a couple times).  I only wished my mind would learn faster, my heart be more driven, life be longer.

So to all of you I say a special thank you for helping a fellow traveler.  I offer my own contributions if I know anything can help you on your way. Lastly I wish you all a good upcoming 2016...under the stars....

I just ordered my 2016 almanacs.....  onward and upwards we gaze...and to distant horizons......not knowing where the journey ends....  but blessing the helpful encounters along the way....

Merry Christmas

Mark C.