Celestial Navigation: A Complete Home Study Course, Second Edition, Hardcover Hardcover – March 4, 2016

By “prescriptive method” I mean that they show you a work form and tell you how to fill in the numbers without telling you what you are filling in or why. Some people prefer to learn this way. Personally I do not learn well from that sort of instruction. I have to understand what it is I am doing even if it is only in layman’s terms. However in Chapter 10 they do offer an overview.To be fair I must point out that this book is primarily intended to be a reference text for an instructor-led course, and perhaps with an instructor to answer questions it would work better.For home study you should start with Chapter 10. Chapter 10 is a good introduction to the basic concepts of celestial navigation. Then returning to the first nine chapters, where they provide the various forms and tell you where to find the numbers to put into those forms, you might not be quite so utterly lost.It is the nature of celestial navigation that there are a great many look-up tables that one must learn to use. I don’t see enough guidance in this book for beginners on how to interpret those tables. I am no stranger to look-up tables, but darned if I didn’t find many in both The Nautical Almanac and various Sight Reduction Tables to be initially confounding. Sure…once you see how they are laid out they are as dirt-simple to use as any look-up tables, but on first blush you can easily get confused.On the plus side Burch is quick to acknowledge many other beginners’ blunders and to point them out along the way. For an example: he is careful to explicitly teach how to add and subtract clock times and angles which at first can seem tricky when you have to carry over whole hours into the minutes or whole degrees into arc-minutes. Furthermore in various places throughout the book he will put in a notation along the lines of : “If you got the wrong answer go back and check this step for thus-and-such error.” A sign of a very experienced teacher, and a great comfort and help to those who are destined to make those blunders. (Myself included!)He also provides a great many practice problems with worked-out answers which are a huge help to any student taking any course in the subject. Even if you learn your celestial from some other source these worked examples would still be a good reason to purchase this book.Once you have got the concepts down (by use of this text or some other course) then moving along to Chapter 11 will reward you with a great wealth of advanced insight and interesting tips. I enjoyed Chapter 11 a great deal, but I already knew how to do celestial navigation when I read it.Regarding the Kindle edition: This book and course relies heavily on work forms. The work forms are actually very well laid out once you understand what it is you are looking for. Although I personally disdain reliance on work forms in preference for fully understanding what you are doing they would certainly be helpful in stressful or fatigued situations. Unfortunately it isn’t easy to flip back and forth in the Kindle book to the various forms, nor is it easy to flip back and forth to the snippets of the various tables from the Nautical Almanac and sight reduction methods. If you already understand that stuff the Kindle version is perfectly OK. You can enlarge any of the illustrations or tables and they are quite intelligible. On the other hand if you are hoping to execute the course with this book alone you would do better to acquire it in hard-copy format.The forms are also available at Starpath-dot-com and you really should buy yourself a hard-copy Nautical Almanac in any case – so you could tackle this particular shortcoming by downloading and printing out the forms and acquiring an almanac before you start. IMHO there isn’t a single course in celestial navigation that would not be greatly enhanced by having a hard copy Nautical Almanac on hand to thumb through even if it is a couple of years out of date.I highly recommend that any student of celestial navigation acquire this book, but I sincerely doubt that one can learn celestial navigation with this one book alone without an instructor to guide you. If an instructor is not available you will probably want to get a hold of a few additional books on the subject to supplement this one. However to be perfectly clear, I do not know of any other single book that will adequately teach you the subject on your own either. Chances are good that if you are attempting to learn this stuff on your own you will end up with at least a few books on the subject.The excellent features enumerated above far outweigh the few slight criticisms I have made so I rate this book five stars. It certainly deserves to be counted among the very best available on the subject.

Ok

All five are good, but only one really walks you through the actual steps, with examples, of cel nav. I wish I saw this book first. The beginning has just the right amount of theory, and then he jumps into the sextant, spending time on the vernier, actual old-school plotting, and then specific examples, ie., noon sighting, sun sighting, moon, and stars. Then there is a thick section of detailed "extra study" material, more or less like an appendix, filled with tips and tricks of all sorts. Finally, there is a glossary, examples, problems, answers, and copies of the forms he suggests you use from his firm. He even covers topics like "short dip" sightings, to use on a lake or land, when you are practicing and can't get out to blue water. This is critical for all us beginners....I am sure that if you go through this book carefully, work the problems, and so on, and then set up your cel nav station, you will be able to do a pretty good job of cel nav from start to finish without so much as a pocket calculator or GPS: just his material, an Almanac or equivalent, a good watch, and a pencil, paper and some plotting tools.I started with the e-book although another reviewer complained about the reproduction of the figures and the difficulty jumping around in the book while working the problems. Like the other reviewer of the ebook, I bought the actual book, and continue to study from the ebook when the regular book is not convenient.If you only have $30 to spend on Cel Nav literature, skip the rest, although they are all good, and go straight to Burch. The ebook is a good add-on, but not easy to work in, secondary to inherent problems with ebooks. Burch has managed to put a whole bunch more into one easy book than anyone else has.I "guarantee" you won't be disappointed.......Amateur boater in Southern California

Wow what a point blank and practical method. The authors pulled no punches in their ability to convey not only theory but methodology as well. Its extremely well written and at times quite entertaining. One only needs to understand that these methods could save your life, boat and crew and the relationship to the authors deep intent to do so. Yes of course aremany texts out there...old faithful Bowditch etc but this one is current and relevant. Also amazing is dispite not taking the course the authors make worksheets and diagrams free for download on the website. While I haven't yet worked through the course I'm confident it will provide the confidence when headed out to sea !

A great study guide and supplement to navigation

True sailor only needs the sky to navigate.

I first bought this book on Kindle. It was useless. Impossible to read any of the tables or charts and difficult to move around as one must do with a text book. Amazon should know better than sell any home study course in Kindle version. Please credit my account for the Kindle version.The hard copy, on the other hand, is very good and I am making much better progress now learning Celestial Navigation. Along with the Nautical Almanac, Sight Reduction Tables, and How to use Plastic Sextants; I expect to never be lost again. So do buy all of David Burch's books - just restrict the Kindle to fiction.

User friendly

If you have enough paper and enough ink you're sure to produce something relevant in the end. Some good material, sometimes too much description, there are diagrams, some are very good, but fewer words and more diagrams might have been better. There are examples & exercises all exhaustive.There are some differences with the terminology being a US production, but all easily translatable. Probably best as a basic or refresh reference book. If this tome was the only book on the topic, some might give up at the first fence.The size & volume of this book make the whole subject seem unnecessarily daunting. When one compares this with Mary Blewitt's slim little volume of 60 odd pages on Celestial Navigation which is so much clearer, succinct and just as comprehensive, one would inevitably choose the latter.

Struggling a bit with this but I think that’s coz it’s a complicated topic. Also the illustration of a sextant looks different from my sextant ( eg mine doesn’t have a light.)The exercises are good but I do find it irritating when it frequently says ‘this is easy’. If that was the case I wouldn’t need the book!

Having done a proper RYA course on this subject twice in the last 15 years this was the first time that I really began to understand what the subject was about rather than simply complete a course. The workbook is designed to inspire you to explore the reasons why something is the way it is rather than simply a descriptive definition of the terms and theory involved. I now understand not just how to use the Nautical Almanac but how it is constructed so that I can double check its figures without assuming they must be correct because its an official publication. The joy in realising that you do understand not just the concepts or the theory but how to apply that knowledge (which will always be in your head rather than a PC) in a vast variety of circumstances really makes you appreciate the wonderful clockwork of the heavens above but also the sheer mastery that our ancient mariners had when they used this knowledge in the confidence that they could safely navigate the oceans around them. In short BUY this book and master this "black" art for ever. One day your GPS will die : the knowledge and the confidence gained by completing this workbook will not.ThanksPeter B.

The book is a brilliant study of celestial navigation techniques, the problem is that when you buy it in the UK you do not get the free computer version of the book along with your purchase, there are a few other Starpath goodies that you do not qualify for also. But all in alll a great book at a great price.

I have tried a few cel nav books, this one starts at the very basics of adding degrees and minutes .... sounds easy but can catch you out.So far so good I’m about 1/3 rd of the way through it. I’m still enjoying reading it. You also get to know their web site and down load well worth the money it’s self.