When you think about it, the easiest and cheapest way to get
nutritious, good tasting vegetables is to whip down to the local
Safeway store, and pick some up.
But for all the supermarkets there are in the world, there are
still some people who really enjoy growing a backyard garden.
They take enormous satisfaction in eating their own tomatoes,
and often will tell you that their tomatoes taste better than
anything they can get in the store. They feel growing their own
helps them get in touch with the earth, and may even help
them center themselves spiritually.
It is much the same for celestial navigators. They don't use
sextants because it is the only way, or even the best way, of
getting a location fix. They do it because they enjoy it.
They take enormous satisfaction in getting a celestial fix. They
feel it helps them get in touch not just with the earth, but
with stars, planets, moon and sun.
One of the advantages of 21st century GPS for celestial navigators is
that they can compare their results to a precise, accurate GPS fix
that they got by simply downloading a free app for their
smartphones. GPS
Status & Toolbox (by MobiWIA - EclipSim) is a
good one for Android.
Sextant navigators in the 21st century can know
whether they have taken a good sight or not, and determine their
accuracy to a degree that was beyond imagining a century ago.
Likely, the most skilled sextant users (though possibly still
not the best navigators) in history are alive right now. You can
dial in your sextant shots to a fare-thee-well today.
Another reason closely related to "fun" is the satisfaction
that comes from getting in touch with the centuries-old
tradition of adventure and exploration in which the sextant
played a critical role. It gratifies both curiosity and the soul
to explore the same navigational techniques that Captains Cook,
Vancouver, Slocum (and yes, even the infamous Captain Bligh...a
failure as a leader of men, but an amazing navigator) used to
guide their vessels around the world.
If you are sailing out of the sight of land and GPS becomes unavailable, your options are pretty much limited to using your sextant...or wandering the seas like the Mary Celeste, hoping that your dead reckoning will be good enough you can bump into an island before your water runs out.
Now the truth is that GPS is likely to be there
whenever you need it. Our modern society has come to depend on
it. There is a huge infrastructure in place to try and ensure
the availability of GPS.
But by the same token, the offshore sailor is likely
to never need an inflatable life raft. That doesn't keep him from
preparing for unlikely events by keeping one on board. You only
need to sink once to gain a whole new appreciation for
statistics.
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To this day, the US Navy - the most sophisticated
user of GPS in the world - requires the quartermaster
on every ship to take regular sextant sights, and to
maintain competency in celestial navigation.
From this news report, it is clear
that vessels in the vicinity of Korea must be
prepared at all times for GPS outages.
Click here
to read a US Navy training document for sailors who
are seeking to achieve certification as
quartermasters. It will give you a feel for how very much
this individual's role is involved
with celestial navigation.
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This article from David Burch,
entitled ""Why Study Celestial Navigation in the Age of GPS?"
is well worth reading.
A real life illustration of NATO disrupting GPS and
leaving Scottish fishermen in panic-mode can be read here. The fishermen seem to have forgotten
everything they ever knew about navigating other than to stare
at the screens of their chartplotters,
Clearly there was advance warning in this case given to all
mariners, but Scottish fishermen evidently feel that only
women and small children read "Notices to Mariners". Real
men just fire up the diesel and point the bow out to sea.
If, as indicated, a ship jams GPS in a radius of 20
miles, that amounts to over 1,200 square miles of ocean. It
would not take very many ships operating together during an
exercise to seriously inconvenience a yachtsman if he were
to allow himself to become as ignorant of navigational
practices as is (apparently) typical for a Scottish
fisherman.
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Master Chief Quartermaster Jonathan Myers teaches midshipmen
how to use a sextant for celestial navigation on
the signal bridge
of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.
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