RYA Ocean Yachtmaster Course in London

Is navigating using a sextant a dying art? In this modern age of GPS do we still need to know how to navigate by the stars? The RYA Ocean Yachtmaster Course (such as the one being run in Canary Wharf, London at the end of January) builds upon sailors’ basic navigational knowledge so those present learn how to find their position using the sun, stars and planets as well as learning about worldwide weather and long distance passage planning.

For centuries sailors have found their way across oceans by celestial navigation. Does anyone out there use it as their primary means of position fixing when crossing an ocean? I cannot believe there is.

Why bother learning to use a sextant?

12 years ago during my brief spell on container ships we ‘shot the sun’ most days. I have 3 A4 hardback notebooks full of numbers and wonderfully long mathematical formulae. At the time I found it extremely satisfying, particularly when my calculations for the day put us under half a mile from the GPS position. Why did we do it though? The ships I sailed on all had at least 2 GPS’s on board, 2 radars and satellite communications. The chances of us losing our way and having to rely on the sextant were incredibly slim, I’d say almost non-existent. I suspect it was more about keeping an old tradition alive, not losing seamanship skills we once relied on and probably more than anything else to keep us busy.

Prior to my time in the merchant navy I had crossed the Atlantic on a sailing boat 4 times and the Indian Ocean once and each time we used a sextant most days, sometimes going for days without checking our position against the GPS. We did it for fun, to give our brains something to do and to fill time. We never had the guts to make landfall without checking it against the boat’s GPS and (usually) 2 handheld GPSs we had on board.

These days there is no real need to know how to navigate using the heavenly bodies. When there are power failures on board there is almost always 1 or 2 handheld GPSs on board that run on AA batteries. So I’d venture to say it is not essential to know how to use a sextant these days but it is extremely satisfying, a lot of fun and next time I’m on a long passage you can be sure I will be using mine.

Learn Traditional Navigation: Course in London starts Jan 2013

In the spirit of keeping the art of navigating by the stars alive First Class Sailing are running an RYA Ocean Yachtmaster evening course in Canary Wharf in London starting at the end of January. If you are at all interested in knowing how to navigate using the sun and the stars then you will find this a fascinating course. You need to have navigational knowledge to the same level as the Coastal Skipper/Yachtmaster Theory course to be eligible to join us for the course.

For more information on this course have a look at the RYA Ocean Yachtmaster Course  details – it starts at the end of January 2013.

By Charlie Tulloch

Posted by: firstclass