Hi all.

I'm crewing on a mate's yacht delivery from Sydney to Melbourne sometime in the next few weeks. I'd like to take the opportunity to learn some things and was thinking I could study and practice the Seamanship and Navigation theory while before / while I go. Skipper is coxswain with many years of coastal experience who can assist I'm sure.

I see you can buy online RYA course through sailing schools but is there another (cheaper) way? Can I buy the texts and work my way through them? Which texts and tools? Note that I'm not necessarily interested in getting a certificate or whatever saying I've completed a course, but more interested in gaining knowledge and applying it.

Thanks.

Roger

The Small Ship's Manual published by Queensland Transport has been the standard text book for coastal mariners for decades. It has everything you need to know in it except sailing techniques.

Navigation for Yachtsmen by Mary Blewitt.

Sailing Companion by Arthur Somers.

Tools:- Capt Fields Pattern Parallel Rules, Quality hand bearing compass, set of Jasco compass and dividers, HB pencils, eraser and charts.

The ships compass should have a deviation card.

Those books may no longer be published so try ebay.

May the seas be slight and the winds following. Have a great trip.

Hi DrRog,
You can buy official RYA course books/manuals online from http://www.boatbooks-aust.com.au. They also have stores in Sydney & Melbourne. I think the RYA books are excellent. I'm sure others like Whitworths, etc would have then too although the range carried by Boatbooks is hard to beat.
Sounds like a good trip. - If you're anything like me though, you'll take some books but not open them (ho hum, it's nice out here, maybe I'll study some other time...)
Have fun.

+1 for Mary Blewitt. Her explanations on Astro nav helped me pass the pussers SCGE years ago with a distinction. Can't remember anything from it now though!

+2 for Mary. Best astro guide I've seen, and I have a Navy astro nav certificate. The astro instructions from the Navy Nav School at HMAS WATSON were also very good, but not as good as Mary's.

Hi Doc, I have not seen Mary's books. But here is a guaranteed way to learn coastal Nav'..... Pick up a copy of Jeff Toghill's "Coastal Navigation", its not a daunting book at all, I have no doubts at all that if you read every page(sometimes I had to read pages two or three times to absorb it, you just have to want to learn it), you will learn all that you need to know.
Get yourself a Bi-rola Chart Protractor (I think its called) its easy as, parralell rules & rollers have no place on a small yacht imho there too easy to make an error with....being bumped around by swell etc, cheers

Thank you all very much for your advice (and well-wishes), esp. the ever-present Cisco. I shall have a squiz at these and decide.

Cisco, did you mean Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen or her older book Navigation for Yachtsmen?

Bi-rola sounds interesting - thanks Blue.

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Ramona said..

+1 for Mary Blewitt. Her explanations on Astro nav helped me pass the pussers SCGE years ago with a distinction.

Can't remember anything from it now though!

That is the killer. Like computer programs unless you are in them all the time, you forget how to use them.

Coastal Navigation is one thing all yachtsmen should learn. It is the area where there are things that you might hit.

The GPS systems in place have proven to be reliable and accurate so using traditional methods of celestial navigation has become a hobby thing more than a necessity.

I learned how to use celestial navigation in 1979 during a trans Tasman crossing east to west from a Master. The basic principle is solving a triangle and interpolation. It needs an accurate time piece, a sextant, a nautical almanac (where do you get them these days?) and a bit of mathematical skill.

The morning shot gives you a line of position, the noon shot gives you a latitude line of position and the afternoon shot gives you a line of position. Transposition of the morning and noon L.O.Ps onto the afternoon LOP by way of dead reckoning (observation of compass course and log reading of distance traveled) will give you a three line FIX late in the day which is just what you need.

Overnight dead reckoning is used to give an approximate position for the next day's observations which will confirm the accuracy or not of the previous observations.

Use of a $200 GPS unit to do all that laborious work is a far better idea so as to free one's time up for fine creative cooking and entertaining fine ladies ( if one is lucky enough to have a few aboard) and proving the fact that fine living on the finest yacht is far better than living in the finest house on the finest shore.

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DrRog said..

Thank you all very much for your advice (and well-wishes), esp. the ever-present Cisco. I shall have a squiz at these and decide.

Cisco, did you mean Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen or her older book Navigation for Yachtsmen?

Bi-rola sounds interesting - thanks Blue.

Navigation for Yachtsmen, you don't need celestial but you do need a GPS to confirm the accuracy of your coastal observations.

On a half (folded) chart sized table a Capt. Fields Pattern parallel rules can be walked accurately all over the chart ( yes, to the folded side).

Cisco, more to astro navigation than just sun shots.
To get an Ocean Nav ticket we had to navigate a ship from port to port over a certain distance. I did mine from Freo to Adelaide.
We had to get a morning star fix using at least 3 stars, a midday sun shot and an evening star fix. The star fix cocked hat had to be within 2nm I think. If the stars weren't visible and the sun was we got a sun shot morning and evening.
I have a little sextant and would love to give it a go on Morning Bird but getting the almanac and Norries tables is just too difficult. If anybody knows where I could get them for a reasonable price let me know.

This raises a point, if you can't get almanacs any more what is the point of being forced to carry paper maps? Dead reckoning works fine for coastal cruising but when out of sight of land it's about as useful as mammary glands on a male bovine. I guess a GPS without a map display would be the only reason to have paper maps so you can X marks the spot, but who has one of those these days?

Surely by now someone has developed a computer and even a mobile phone ap for celestial nav. (If not get to it you geeks). Enter the sighting info and voila your position. II recall in my earlier days having to use a slide rule which had many lines of log and other markings. I still have the slide but I can't for the life of me remember how to use its features now except for basic multiply and divide functions. The point of this is that technology has advanced and even if knowing how to carry out celestial nav the technology has gone beyond pen and paper and almanac tables. You are dependent on having an accurate functioning timepiece in any event are you not.

Found the following aps to have a look at:

1. StarStruck Navigation https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.polyglotz.starstruck
2. Star Pilot www.starpilotllc.com/
3. 10 best aps for Celestial Navigation appcrawlr.com/ios-apps/best-apps-celestial-navigation

And for anyone who actually understands this stuff and thinks it is relevant : New Technology for Celestial Navigation
gkaplan.us/content/NewTech.html

Arguably the principal motivation in navigating by the stars is you don't need outside assistance or technology. Using an app on the device you can't charge because your electrics got cooked seems to defeat the idea.
However, I will download one of these so that I can play with my sextant.

I did my celestral nav course at the Sydney Tafe in the mid 70's.
Never used it apart from doing the course that Cruising Helmsman ran some years ago.

I got a book some 10's of years ago called:-

Celestral Navigation- Easy Nav- Instructions to a Position Line.
LIFETIME ALMANAC TABLES
by F Dinkelaar

Mind you I have never used it, in fact its still in the original plastic wrapper!
Goes well with the Davis plastic sextant in its original box!

Half way through reading this old one that was dads.
Can't put it down. Very easy to read. Written in the 70's, so a few of the electronic references are out dated but still the same non the less and is a great book for novices navigators like myself.
I am sure this is the one mentioned in previous posts above.
Published by Reed and the dewi number is ISBN 0589071653 should you want to go to your local book shop or order online.

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MorningBird said...
Cisco, more to astro navigation than just sun shots.
To get an Ocean Nav ticket we had to navigate a ship from port to port over a certain distance. I did mine from Freo to Adelaide.
We had to get a morning star fix using at least 3 stars, a midday sun shot and an evening star fix. The star fix cocked hat had to be within 2nm I think. If the stars weren't visible and the sun was we got a sun shot morning and evening.
I have a little sextant and would love to give it a go on Morning Bird but getting the almanac and Norries tables is just too difficult. If anybody knows where I could get them for a reasonable price let me know.

I have a book of Norries tables in front of me. But published in 1973. So don't know how accurate it would be for use today.

actually most people have a GPS to use with a paper map...a phone with GPS out of range of mobile reception still gives Lat/Long, which you can plot on a map. So still good idea to have a map.

Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

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cisco said..
Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

I have the Navionics on mine and I hear that the iPad version is somehow better and more user friendly and the really annoying part is that I hear the same thing for a lot of iPad versions. Now I'm not sure if this is actually the case or if the Android versions are not as good.

actually I wonder if any boat still has RDF navigation installed...and used????

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LooseChange said..

cisco said..
Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

I have the Navionics on mine and I hear that the iPad version is somehow better and more user friendly and the really annoying part is that I hear the same thing for a lot of iPad versions. Now I'm not sure if this is actually the case or if the Android versions are not as good.

I don't really know anything else but iPad what is a Android? ! Is Android like blackberry? Haha

Android is in tablets. Very friendly compare to Apple's iPad.

RDF .. Never seen one on boats, but common an planes.
On the boat, you can any transistor radio with build in ferrite aerial.
Guess would be difficult to find coordinate the stations.

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LooseChange said..

cisco said..
Navionics on a tablet with GPS is brilliant.

I have the Navionics on mine and I hear that the iPad version is somehow better and more user friendly and the really annoying part is that I hear the same thing for a lot of iPad versions. Now I'm not sure if this is actually the case or if the Android versions are not as good.

The fixed keel Cole 23 we have visiting us for a few weeks used a Raymarine Navionics plotter to attempt an entry to Shoalhaven heads recently. Last bloke I know off to do that successfully was Bass in 1796 and from accounts it was not too succesful. Have a look at your Navionics chart for that area then compare it to a real chart.

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nods said..
actually I wonder if any boat still has RDF navigation installed...and used????

Big thing in Europe apparently, so the answer is yea!

Navionics does have gaps in it but remember it is only a navigation AID.

Question.... Nautical Table....
My impression is ..... they are timeless. Are they ?

Instead of tables, you can use Nav. Calculator?

Stone
I have a book of Norries tables in front of me. But published in 1973. So don't know how accurate it would be for use today.

Using an electronic aid for astro nav kind of negates the challenge of getting from A to B just using the stars, sun, moon and planets and your trusty sextant. Norries is timeless I think, almanacs are yearly.
However, the iPhone app will allow me to play with my sextant and keep the skills alive. If I do a major ocean passage I'll find the pubs I need at the time.

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Charriot said...
Question.... Nautical Table....
My impression is ..... they are timeless. Are they ?

Instead of tables, you can use Nav. Calculator?

Stone
I have a book of Norries tables in front of me. But published in 1973. So don't know how accurate it would be for use today.

I may have been given a bum steer about Norries Tables Book and have now read through it more I agree much of it is timeless. ie ports of the world lat & long, conversions etc.

I must say their is a lot in it that I don't understand their use or purpose as yet but will learn. It does explain what each table is for but I just haven't had time to fully get my head around it
ie "logarithms,haversines. etc.

Cheers

Morning Bird ... any chance to suggest iPhone apps, for Astro...didn't have much luck

Stone ... Using the tables is not that difficult .

I believe would be a program for programable calculators /seen for HP, /
but I need to find for TI.
That would completly eliminate tables.

Funny how we think nav by stars is important anymore with GPS! A compass will never go out of date unless the poles start swinging, dead reckoning can get you back to land. But Seamanship well there is a topic to get lost in!
Most of us would agree on learning as much as possible before heading out Because we have learnt from our mistakes, yeah don't do as I done but take my advice because I don't need it :))....
For me a well founded and prepared boat is most important, more than its design for most boats are able to deal with a lot. Know your boat and what it can do and know yourself too.