If it turns out that a dozen sailors are the total number of people in central Alberta interested in celestial navigation...then we will have the course this year, never offer it again, and say "This was a good thing to do. I'm glad we did it. It was fun."
However, if there is enough market demand, we anticipate offering the course again in years 2016 and 2017.
At the end of that time – if we get that far – there will be 30-ish people who have been trained in sextant navigation. Our hope is that from that group in year 2018, there will be enough interested people that we can offer a 7-day advanced celestial nav course...one which will be held in the open ocean off the west coast. We will head out in one or more yachts, sextants on board, to try our hand at non-electronic navigation.
We will compete with each other to see who can produce the best running fixes, and keep track of our position over the entire duration of the trip (as judged by the single designated person on board who is allowed to look at the GPS) to see who will be the "master navigator".
We will learn techniques for "catching the crest" of waves, so that we see an actual horizon and not the top of a 10 foot wave 100 yards away (which could lead to an error in your fix of up to 114 miles).
We will introduce the concept of the "circle of uncertainty" (COU). We will develop our skill at estimating our own COU. We will actually use time-honored techniques from the pre-GPS era for making a safe landfall, based on that COU.
We will learn a 4-minute-long procedure that will let us come up with the course we should follow to sail the most efficient, straight line course across the face of the ocean (called a "great circle route"), and know exactly what our great-circle distance is to our destination. This will aid us in planning our ETA and managing our food and water supplies to best effect.
We will learn how to go about modifying our great-circle courselines based on long term weather patterns...and just where we go to get that information.
We will simulate various sorts of failure and practice emergency navigation techniques such as latitude-sailing, which you will use when all your timepieces get fried by the EMP of a lightning bolt that hit the mast. We will evaluate the feasibility of following the contrails of passenger jets headed back to Vancouver, in the event that not only our GPS units but also our sextant is damaged or lost.
We will practice using our Nautical Almanacs to determine the compass variation at our precise location, so that we can accurately steer the course we want.
We will also practice techniques we will have all read about (before the course happens) in Adelard Cole's Heavy Weather Sailing.
We will set and strike our trysail and storm jib.
We will set a parachute anchor, and compare that technique to heaving-to as a means of riding smoothly in heavy winds.
We will not just talk about, but actually practice techniques for steering in the event of a catastrophic rudder failure, e.g. dragging a bucket behind, yoked to cleats both to starboard and port...and varying the center-of-pull to one side or the other.
If you have ever been disappointed by what was supposed to be an instructional sailing trip...but there was not much instruction to be had, because the skipper was so intent on getting to the final destination...then THIS will be the trip for you. The goal will not be to get back to Victoria as quickly as possible, but to seriously expand and sharpen our skills as sailors, and have a bucket load of fun as we do so.
The prerequisite for going on this advanced course will be to take the AOSA celestial navigation course, such as the one coming up in August of this year.
The plan is that if ever we have a surplus of income over expenses for the celestial course, we plow the money back into navigational instruction - with the idea that maybe, just maybe, we will see our way through to offering the advanced course in 2018...and our investment will have offset some of the increased expenses associated with offering that advanced course.
Sound like fun? Then you need to take this course in 2015...and talk your buddies into taking it in 2016 and 2017.