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LOL! Wheras relying on wind up clock and a visible sky for your position is not worrying? Sextants are not over the top compared to GPS they are completely ineffective!

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Hmmmm.... not quite the case. A sextant is hugely useful in determining your position when in sight of land by measuring included angles.

Besides, the entire GPS system could be turned off at any time. OK, the probability of that happening to any of us must be very small but the fact that the entire GPS system has never gone down does not mean that it never WILL go down.

I would feel far more comfortable in the hands of a sailor who has (and uses from time to time) a sextant and who carries a simple Tescos Value GPS for lat/long than with the sailor, untrained in basic marine navigation, who has never had to navigate any distance without GPS and who has three plotters, two handheld GPSs, a drawer full of batteries and a UPS supply to the equipment. The latter looks very smart but I fear that it is an accident waiting to happen.

People should learn the basics and that includes being completely comfortable with how to lay off a course using pencil, ruler, protractor, dividers/compasses, tide tables and some kind of tidal atlas - and, of course, a paper chart. I would suggest to anyone who cannot do it that they buy a suitable book - Dayskipper covers all the basics you need - and learn how to do it....or if you find that difficult, take a class and make some new friends at the same time.

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My daily blog on the current financial crisis is at:- http://davidscompass.blogspot.com No PMs for now ybw1.20.lemain@spamgourmet.com

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