Hawaii by Sextant: An In-Depth Exercise in Celestial Navigation Using Real Sextant Sights and Logbook Entries

This is a workbook based on an actual log of a sailing trip to Hawaii. It contains all of the necessary tables to work the problems, and as such you will be doing a lot of flipping back and forth through the pages. I started out with the Kindle version. Although all of the information is there it is not convenient to flip back and forth from various tables so I then had to purchase the paperback version. Don't make the same mistake.The only tables which you will need that are not included are sight reduction tables of your choice and The Increments and Corrections Table from the back of The Nautical Almanac. You must access that elsewhere. The Increments and Corrections Table doesn't change year-over-year so any modern almanac will have it, or you can find it on-line. Starpath (the publisher of this book) claims to offer it on-line but I didn't find it at their website. It is available on-line for free within almanacs downloaded from “ TheNauticalAlmanac(dot)com ” and perhaps from other sources as well. However if you are serious about learning Cel-Nav you really should buy yourself a copy of the current Nautical Almanac in hard copy anyway, and you will find it there. Even with a hard copy Nautical Almanac it is still amounts to one more book upon your knee just to access these tables so I encourage the publishers to include them in any future printings of “Hawaii by Sextant.”You are given the log entries and the sextant data and left to first work out your position by dead reckoning and then get a fix by celestial navigation. Exactly how you go about that is entirely up to you. You can do the DR mathematically by The Sailings, or by plotting. You decide for yourself how to parse the raw sextant data; and you can use any sight reduction method you choose. The one exception is the H.O. 249 “Sight Reduction Tables for Air Navigation,” which are the basis for many home-study courses. H.O. 249 only handles bodies with declination less than 30 degrees but several of the bodies in this book are outside of that range. If you have only learned how to use H.O. 249 this is an opportunity to learn another method.The solutions that are offered in the book are managed in two ways. The first is by computed solutions and much of the book seems to be oriented favorably towards using that approach. However they also offer solutions to each problem based on the use of H.O. 229 “Sight Reduction Tables for Marine Navigation.” with manual plotting. I worked mine with compact tables but compared my solutions to the solutions of the H.O. 229 plots and this worked quite well.You will need to supply your own worksheets (if you use them,) universal plotting sheets, plotting tools, calculator, pad and pencils, etc. You won't need a sextant or a watch and my advice to you is if you have NOT purchased a sextant yet wait until you finish this book to make your choice.The authors offer much more than simple solutions. They also delve further into the entire process through their analysis and additional discussions which is interesting, informative, and educational. They also get you doing some sight planning and other “daily work” that is easy to dismiss as simple and unimportant until the time comes when you really need to actually do it.The true value in this book is gained by working the problems without peeking ahead. You will find that you will make blunders and learn how to catch them in the future. You will develop your own versions of work-organization that fit your personal style. And you will quickly discover that even using the same data from the same round of sights more than likely you will arrive at slightly different solutions than the authors. Discovering why and exploring the “what if's?” of that while safely at your desk with plenty of time to ponder the question is the greatest value of all. Why did he pick the one sight that I rejected as an outlier? What if I averaged all the sights in the round instead of picking out just one that I thought looked pretty good? How do you decide which sight is off in a round when there are only three to work with? And lastly, is his solution really any better than mine? To be fair the authors openly state that your solution just might be better than theirs in certain situations. In that respect this entire workbook is about gaining confidence in your own abilities and judgments. Coming to the exact same solution as theirs isn't the point … coming to a solution in which you have confidence is.One eye-opener for the neophyte is that even with (we presume) a high quality sextant well adjusted and in the hands of an experienced celestial navigator the resulting data can lead to differing fixes depending upon how the navigator parses it. The absolute precision of the sextant has far less to do with the accuracy of the fix than does the data analysis. After working this book a newbie should be convinced that to get accurate results he doesn't really need a $2500 sextant as much as he needs a clear mind, a sharp pencil, a lot of graph paper, and probably a scientific calculator.This book is a unique resource for teaching and learning cel-nav. All teachers and students should get a copy and work it through. By the time you are done you will have learned a lot about the practical side of the art. You will have also further developed your own methods and improved your insights. About the only equivalent would be to take a long voyage with an experienced teacher, which is a situation few of us can arrange in this day and age.

Wow! I love this book and the learning adventure that it provides! I have a basic land and air navigation background. I took those basics and endeavored to teach myself Cel Nav (with other resources - A Star to Steer Her By as the core). Once I got the fundamentals down I was looking for something to help me understand how to put the capability into practice in practical application. This book does exactly that.As far as I can tell, this is a one-of-a-kind resource. It provides an avenue to accomplish a table-top, as in at your kitchen table top, celestial navigation journey to practice, as it demonstrates, how to Cel Nav across an ocean in the varying conditions that are bound to present themselves.I have come across a couple of minor errors in the book. I think these may have been introduced in the type-setting process. For instance, in the first problem set, I arrived at the same intercept outcome that is shown in the author's workform in the book. However, in the "answers" page for that problem, the intercept numbers are a little bit different. Also in an example graph in the section on sight analysis, the two Hc numbers labelled on the vertical axis are of identical value, when of course they should be different values as they would be on any kind of graph. However, these minor things do not detract at all from this book - they just caused a slight double-take at my own calculations.If you or someone you know has a keen interest in celestial navigation and how it is done in practice, this is a book for you!

Amazing book!

Okay, I'll fess up right away. I really like this book. When David first mentioned his idea to do a book based on the actual day to day navigation of an offshore sailboat solely by traditional celestial means, I thought it terrific. In the flesh, the book proves me right. Even the cover—a stylized track of his passage from Cape Flattery to Maui in 1982 on a 41-footer—speaks the spirit of celestial navigation. It reminds me of the constellation Draco.Although conceived as a master class in celestial navigation, an unintended consequence of it's meticulous detailing of the navigator's daily work, is, if you just read the narrative, you read an adventure story.My take, therefore, is this book works on several levels and can be enjoyed by lots of folks, not just those looking for an absorbing way to master the nitty gritty of celestial navigation.Whether you're a sailor or not, but simply curious about celestial navigation, read just the narrative parts of this 17-day, 2800-mile passage under sail. David always describes the wind, sky and sea conditions for each round of sights. You'll soon have the feel of things. For sure, you don’t have to be an old salt to feel your gut clench when you learn there is a hurricane to your south and history says it's going to meet you way out there, where you are, a thousand miles from any shore.If you're an old-style navigator, read the narrative and take a look at the plotting sheets. Good memories will flood you.If you've done celestial in the past and are now planning an offshore passage, here's an excellent way to brush up using real-life sights, not concocted set pieces. Try a few. Check yourself out.Even sailors who have done celestial for years have things to learn. For example, it's a delight to watch David and co-author Steve Miller extract longitude and latitude (i.e., a fix) from sights snatched each side of noon on a dismal, overcast day.One thing I in particular learned during the years I was an online instructor for Starpath, is how much more you can do with a Dead Reckoning position than I ever diid.Back in the pre-GPS days, the DR was the only check for celestial LOPs and fixes. I mainly looked to see that the spread between them and the DR made sense - span between DR and LOP or fix consistent with distance run, point of sail, sea state. David, however, considers not only at those, but also takes note of the DR-to-fix bearing. On this passage to Maui, it enabled him to discern an unusual oceanic phenomenon.If you've learned celestial in a class ashore and want a sense of what it's really like under combat conditions, so to speak, read and then work a few of the sights and compare your results with those presented. If you want a master class, do 'em all.Net of everything, there is a lot more to Hawaii By Sextant than fine pedagogy. Considered strictly as instruction, though, it's the closest thing there is to a flight simulator for celestial navigation.—Hewitt Schlereth, author of Celestial Navigation in a Nutshell and Commonsense Celestial Navigation.

Excepcional libro de prácticas. Muy recomendado. Me ha parecido una idea genial.

The book for anyone who wants to practice their site reduction skills and become confidant in their ability to find small islands offshore without electronics

Excellent and fun to work through the voyage a real help in making navigation more realistic