Celestial Navigation

[HenryC]

I'm throwing this out for general discussion.  If the moderators feel this topic is inappropriate for this forum, I apologize and authorize  them in advance to remove this post.  Thank you for your consideration.

Henry Cordova

I read somewhere once that some third world country requires that applicants for a maritime master's licence must pass an examination which expects the candidate to be able to identify each sail and spar as well as all the standing and running rigging of a three-masted ship. The story may be apocryphal but it points out what might soon be a situation faced by practitioners of another dying art--celestial navigation. Determining one's position at sea by making observations of heavenly bodies is rapidly becoming obsolete. The effectiveness and reliability of methods of electronic navigation, particularly the Global Positioning System (GPS), has pretty much put the sextant man out of business and it must surely be only a matter of time before regulations expecting mariners to qualify in celnav may be as anachronistic as having them know how to wear about a square-rigger in a gale. We may be there already.

I don't enjoy adopting the position of devil's advocate; I am very proud of my ability to navigate by the stars and I'm well aware of the history and romance which are so much a part of this ancient craft. But it must be pretty obvious by now that the training and practice needed to keep this skill viable, as well as the cost of maintaining the infrastructure needed to support it, make it increasingly impractical to consider celnav as an alternative to modern methods. The major argument to keeping celestial in the navigator's curriculum, its role as a backup to electronics, no longer holds up. Granted, GPS is a mechanical device subject to malfunction in the harsh marine environment, but keeping several waterproof hand-held receivers aboard certainly makes more sense than going to the trouble of learning celestial methods. On small craft, where there is a shortage of space, the bulk occupied by a sextant case, almanacs, sight reduction tables and all the other paraphernalia needed to reduce a sight could certainly be better utilized by keeping a second or even a third small unit in the lazarette. The time needed to master and maintain this skill could also be better utilized by training in a variety of others, such as first aid or diesel repair. It is not realistic to think that even a skilled navigator would bother to keep up with his celnav when automated methods were easily available, not to mention that for the cost of even a second-rate sextant he or she could easily purchase several pocket-sized GPS units and a lifetime supply of batteries. You're much more likely to drop your sextant over the side than for all your hand-helds to fail simultaneously.

Proponents of traditional methods of navigation, and I count myself as one of them, are quick to point out that even though GPS receivers are accurate and robust, they are dependent on a constellation of earth satellites which are vulnerable to military action, astronomical events such as solar flares, and failure of the government bureaucracy needed to maintain them. But just how realistic are these fears? There is a great deal of redundancy built into the system, and although it is always possible that circumstances will lead to a decline of its performance, it's highly unlikely that it will totally shutdown overnight. I used to fantasize about electromagnetic pulse from a nearby supernova taking out the whole system, but I was forced to accept that it would also fry my quartz timepieces and pocket calculator and every other integrated circuit on my boat as well. I still have sight reduction tables and I could do latitude sailing, or even learn lunars, but I think you get my point.

The long term effects of a government failure to properly maintain the system are certainly an issue, but if things ever get to that point, what guarantee would we have that the Nautical Almanac would still be published every year or that time ticks would be broadcast on short wave? In any event, the system would degrade slowly and there would be plenty of time to adopt more traditional methods. As GPS and other satellite systems like it become more commonly used, it will be much more likely that the alternatives will suffer budget cuts and administrative neglect. Aids to navigation will be gradually phased out, and technologies like LORAN will be allowed to die a natural death. There are already signs that this has started to occur. Celestial also has an expensive technical support structure: the Almanac and the Time Service. The explosive growth of GPS use in aviation, civil engineering, and industry suggests that there are sufficient economic pressures to maintain that system even if at the expense of other maritime applications. It's much more likely that the Naval Observatory will lose funding than the Department of Defense and it won't be the first time that our society has chosen to save money by throwing all its technological eggs into one basket.

There is one purely practical aspect of celestial navigation which will be lost if we should ever come to rely wholly on high technology. Mastering this eighteenth century art also means the practitioner is completely familiar with all the ancillary skills of the seaman: dead reckoning, piloting, mathematics, geography and astronomy. In fact, it provides a general education useful in any navigational situation, even an emergency where no technology at all is available. The instincts and awareness developed by a lifetime of dealing with the inaccuracies and intermittent nature of positional data will fade away. It is this overall grasp of the big picture which we risk losing as our mariners spend more of their time and effort managing the technology instead of visualizing where they are and where they need to go. Whether the decision makers who now hold the fate of celnav in their hands realize this is not clear; already, the US Navy is considering phasing out its traditional Quartermaster rating, the enlisted navigational specialist, and passing that responsibility to Operations Specialists (electronic technicians) because of the ubiquity of digital systems in navigation. We run the risk that the art of determining a position at sea by carefully observing distant landmarks in our solar system and galaxy, and deriving location by means of calculations on the results of those observations, will become merely a hobby for dilletantes.

[nies]

HenryC, WE DONT NEED TO TEACH THE BASICS OF MATH ANYMORE BECAUSE WE HAVE CALCULATORS , AND ON AND ON IT GOES!!!!!!! IN ONE GENERATION WE CAN LOSE THE KNOWLEDGE OF A THOUSAND YEARS. REMEMBER, JUST LOSE OUR ELECTRICITY AND WE ARE REALLY BACK IN THE DARK AGES. ...........NIES

[HenryC]

When the Roman Empire fell and civilization and law and order collapsed, most of the population still knew how to grow food, work metal, weave cloth, and keep livestock.  People could still build houses (and boats!), start a fire from scratch, in short, do everything necessary to rebuild.  Even so, it took a thousand years to get back to where they had been when things fell apart. What's going to happen to us?

[Bob23]

Henry:
   Wow! That was quite a post! Even though I only know the basics of celestial nav, I find it amazing that one can navigate by the celestial bodies. As I learn more, I feel somewhat connected to my ancient mariner friends whom I've never met. Moreso, the fact that it works at all is testimony to the precision and accuracy of the movements and positions of the sun, moon and stars that our Creator has put in place. As I learn more, God becomes somewhat bigger and more personal than before. I don't mean to head down another path, just my thoughts.
   Navigation in general is fascinating. The ancient Chinese used a crude form of celestial nav, and the Polynesians used wave directions, water color, wind directions, the presence of seabirds, etc. to travel thousands of miles over open oceans. Now that's navigation at it's most basic form- no  instruments or watches at all! (Read "The Last Navigator" by Stephen D. Thomas..you'll love it!)
   I was at a gps seminar at a sailboat show some years back. The speaker showed a slide of a medium sized freighter that was being guided by gps that T-boned an island. The cause? Incorrect datum entered in the gps. Don't get me wrong, I love my gps. But there is something wonderful in knowing how to do something yourself, don't you agree?
Bob23...just my 2 cents...again!

[HenryC]

Yes, I read "The Last Navigator" as well, excellent.  It's amazing how even Neolithic Man, the ancient Polynesians, through careful and systematic observation were able to navigate without instruments or mathematics.  I am currently working on an article for Florida Wildlife Magazine on Emergency Navigation, using the sky, without any instruments, just like the seafarers of the Pacific did.

Although I must confess, I never saw navigation in the same terms as you describe.  On the contrary, it drove home to me the idea that no matter how  magical and mysterious the universe is, it CAN be understood by man, through the use of reason.   The universe is complex, and vast, but inherently it makes sense.  No matter how complicated it is, essentially it can be described and understood by the human mind as the result of a handful of simple mathematical  relationships and fundamental physical truths.   Indeed, the most amazing single fact about the universe is that it IS knowable.  But just because there is a reason for everything does not mean there is a purpose to anything.

This hit me all at once, on a sailing trip a long time ago, and I wrote about it:

http://www.goodoldboat.com/newsletter/febnewslett28.html#night

Still, I am not a strict reductionist or a total materialist.  I do believe there is a spiritual dimension, although I haven't a clue as to what it is or my role in it. The magic and mystery still remains.  I guess my feelings are best described by my favorite writer  in the final paragraph of her great book on the seashore life of the Atlantic Coast:

"Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.  What is the message signaled by the hordes of diatoms, flashing their microscopic lights in the night sea?   What truth is expressed by the legions of barnacles, whitening the rocks with their habitations, each small creature within finding the necessities of its existence in the sweep of the surf?  And what is the meaning of so tiny a being as the transparent wisp of protoplasm that is a sea lace, existing for some reason inscrutable to us -- a reason that demands its presence by the trillion amid the rocks and weeds of the shore?  The meaning haunts and ever eludes us, and in its very pursuit we approach the ultimate mystery of Life itself."

From  The Edge of the Sea
- Rachel Carson (1955)

[Joseph]

Deep thoughts! (so deep that my sonnar is not reading any more...). Not sure what reality is... not sure what truth is either... not sure what exactly is knowledge... not sure whether when we aprehend reality we are really aprehending anything else than ourselves (Hegelian thought, not mine...). Except that some things or events, sometimes seem to show enough consistency in space-time (whatever that is...) as to be predictable most of the times. I am inclined to think that knowledge is less about truth than about whatever works...  Anyway, let's give the sonnar a rest...

We run the risk that the art of determining a position at sea by carefully observing distant landmarks in our solar system and galaxy, and deriving location by means of calculations on the results of those observations, will become merely a hobby for dilletantes.

Beautifully said! But no regret should be felt. It is the price of simplification through technology ("whatever works", remember?) and the consumer massification (and associated revenues) of complex things and knowledge (whatever it is...) that were once developed and available only to the elite of experts or the initiated. After all, the same could be said about programming in Assembler (which had an esthetics of its own), amateur radio (73!), black and white photography (I loved the dark room!) and, yes, also sailing itself...!(wee! at least I was able to get back to sailing...).  For us, life-dilletantes, what best hobbies than those now obsolete technologies that past generations (including our own) once took so much time, effort and pride in discovering, developing and learning about... I love dwelling in obsolete technologies... in fact, if not obsolete yet, they tend to feel more like... work?. Not much of a hobby!

J.

[HenryC]

One day at lunch, some colleagues and I were having this same conversation.  We were discussing our "19th century skills".  One of us was a black powder enthusiast and also loaded his own cartridges and cast his own bullets.  Another was an equestrienne, still a third was a ham operator and very proud of his "fist" on the code key.  I, of course, mentioned I was a sailor and a navigator.

We asked Jill what her "19th century skill" was.  She thought about it for a long time and finally answered, "Golf".

Funny, when we had that conversation, we all earned our living as FORTRAN programmers...

[brackish]

HenryC, point well made and concern appropriate. 

Many, many years ago I took a coastal navigation course.  This was in the days of RDF/ADF dominance with loran just peaking around the corner.  The instructor gave us a crash course in celestial.  His comment was that "you will probably never use this but I hope if you have to you will have learned enough today to be able to take a well written instruction and understand it enough to put it in practice". That may be the best one can hope for.

My first job out of college was to take stick diagrams of diagonal bracing on offshore platforms and convert them to cut diagrams for the pipes.  Trig formulas, smoley's tables, and hundreds of manual calculations per platform.  It is a 19th century skill that has been made obsolete by computers.  The good news is that it cost far less to get the job done.  The bad news is I suspect students today wonder why they are required to take trig and other advanced math courses because they can't see the practical application.

I wonder where I put that slide rule..........

Frank

[HenryC]

Well, you know what they say.  It would be too expensive to build the Panama Canal today. The software cost would be too high.

[multimedia_smith]

My Dad (age 91) visited this weekend (he drove himself and my mom).  He is a retired Coast Guard Pilot and a former Celestial Navigation instructor.  He was teaching the class at a maritime trades school as late as twenty years ago.  There is something to be said about self reliance (should all of our technology go south).  We learned after Katrina down here what it is to be instantly transported out of the modern world.  We didn't have electricity for 6 weeks and all of the Cell phone towers were knocked down so there was no regular or cell phone service for 9 weeks.
I think back to boy scouts and the fact that I couldn't master Morse Code and thought "I'll never use that"... then I thought about John Mc Caine at the "Hanoi Hilton" and the fact that the only communication he and his fellow prisoner's had was Morse Code... what if they hadn't had to learn that... it would have been too late to learn at that point.
We spent several tours in Alaska when I was growing up... and one thing that stuck with me was the idea of being self reliant.
Celestial is a worthy skill... we can debate its usefulness, but that's not the point... It's more about our connection with the universe and our connection with History... When I'm sailing sometimes with guests... the subject enevitably comes up about the voyagers from the past channeling the forces of nature to go where they wanted to go... regardless of the direction of the wind.  I've enjoyed reading this thread...
Thanks
Dale

[HenryC]

http://www.qmss.com/article/morn_sight.html
http://www.qmss.com/article/pepperday.html
http://www.qmss.com/seastories/seastory04.html
http://www.qmss.com/seastories/seastory05.html

Thanks, Dale

And it's been a pleasure for me to chat with you guys too.  I hope you don't mind if I monitor and occasionally contribute to your site, I've written articles about Com-Pacs, but I've never owned one.  The links above are some celnav-related articles I have posted to a Navy Vet's site I occasionally contribute to, and my own web site is

http://www.sandyjdesigns.com/page19.html 

If you have any questions for me, or would just like to chat, please feel free to drop me a line at

gutmancaspar@yahoo.com

And if you'll forgive just one more  plug, I have an article on "Night Sailing" appearing in the next issue of "Florida Wildlife".

Fair Winds, and following seas--
Henry Cordova

[newt]

You know, you guys can get all mystic about it, but knowing how to pilot without a GPS is just good common sense. I don't think you should be allowed out of the harbor without it. I have had the GPS go down many times during a cruise, and the last time was 2 weeks ago! Time to get a fix! Or if you really wanted to be punny-"I just fixed that"

[HenryC]

"Getting mystical" is why we sail, isn't it?  Let's face it, crossing a body of water in a sailing vessel is not exactly the most practical way to do it.  We sail because it DOES put us in touch with our ancestors, and with nature, with our own bodies, and even (as in navigation) the universe itself.  And it reminds us that perhaps the "practical reality" we deal with every day in our working world is highly artificial, and frankly, quite bogus.  We spend our lives engaged in lunatic professions like software maintenance, real estate investment counseling and hospitality management as if they were really important in the grand scheme of things.  There's nothing like a midnight battle with flogging sails or spending a weekend servicing a marine head to bring us down to earth in a hurry and remind us what really matters..

The sailor stands at the interface between two wild and chaotic environments, the earths's atmosphere and the great world ocean.  He deals with them and with those hostile and indifferent natural forces with only his senses and his hands.  It is the human mind and body interacting directly with the cosmos: infinte and unstoppable reality barely controlled through the medium of his boat, a human artifact of great but fixed capabilities which embodies within it the accumulated skills and experience of thousands of generations of mariners and craftsmen.  His rig stabs the sky, his keel plumbs the depths, and his hull embraces the razor thin boundary between the two.  The whole of Creation comes together at a man's hand resting on the tiller, or grasping a sheet.

Every sailor knows this, perhaps he may not put it into words the same way I have, but he knows it deep in his soul or he wouldn't be there.  There are other ways to live this way, on the back of a horse, in the seat of a motorcycle, or even sitting, staring at a blank sheet of paper trying to come up with a few words that someone will take the time to read more than once.
And I know it when I go up on deck late at night, brushing the sleep from my eyes, and under a starry sky stare out at the distant horizon to see the first flash of a lighthouse at the edge of the world, exactly where and when my dead reckoning told me it would appear.  There is no other feeling like it in the world.

[newt]

Well said my mystic friend.

[Bob Condon]

This is a fun post!

I started my life with Fortran with the nuclear industry... Worked for 13 PHDs as a student and life went on.
Really fun days, then worked for Control Data (who?) and Apollo Computers (who?) and finally CIsco for 10 years... now
at a Video On Demand company, and my days are no where near as fun as my last 25 years...

I still have code running in weather towers from 1979! and it works correctly...

For me, sailing is the challenge of wind, weather and the ocean. But more important, is
the social time with friends or relatives in a QUIET place. I do like power boating
when my ADD side kicks in, but love sailing the most.

For 19th century skills, I am a carpenter, woodworker (rebuilt cabinets inside an Ericson 32 for
a friend because everything wasn't square). I built a Shellback Dinghy "because it was not square"
and dunk tank for the church fair ( toilet mechanism over the victim... will convert to electrical timer/valve for next year)

I grew up in a house with a complete metal machine shop (Dad was one of the best in the area... I wished I
hung around in the shop more because the shop is now mine and I need to go to night school to perfect
thise skills)

I saw Gerry Speis (and Jim Lovell)  at a conference on people who have done or live through some real trying but successful events.
Jim was on Apollo 13.. Gerry Speis sailed an 8 foot boat built in Minnesota and sailed from Maine- England and
San Franscisco -> Australia. In San Franscisco, the Nav gear crapped out before he left the harbor so overboard
it went. He said that he learned that if you take a paper map and turn it over so you see the back, then you can
look at the underside of the clouds and get the same reflection. Clouds form over islands which are warm and not over
the ocean.. and that is how he got to Australia... in an 8 ' boat.
The boat was designed to be self righting if it rolled and the deck was just as strong as the hull so it could
roll (and it did )  It was small enough so you had to hang your backside off the transom as a bathroom procedure...

A wonderful conference (back in 1983!)