Star Bright

Star Bright

Somehow we are maintaining steerage and course over a virtually windless sea. With clear horizons and almost no clouds hindering our efforts, these are perfect conditions for star sights.

It will be the first multi-body fix in weeks and I am anxious about my position. The locations and timings of my route have me almost too close for comfort to vigorous, rapidly developing low settling on my track sometime March 26th of next week.

Yes, that seems a long ways off but the opportunities to get south and east are limited. Being able to maintain a Southeasterly course in such light airs is a stroke of luck that I am more than grateful for.

For any celnav nuts out there, these conditions produce very accurate fixes if you are able to pre-compute altitudes and azimuths. Pre-computation allows for sights to be made while the horizon is  still distinct and often before the star is visible to the naked eye. If you are after accuracies approaching the limit of what is possible on a small vessel, advance each LOP to a common time. This will eliminate any errors in the fix associated with distance traveled over the ground between sites. By accurate, I mean all LOPs cross at the same point in the plotting sheet.

For any non celnav types, my apologies for perhaps boring you to tears!

Follow my tracks in real-time:
https://bit.ly/svseaburban