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Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen | 
 enlarge | Author: Mary Blewitt
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy New: $6.32
You Save: $6.63 (51%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 53127
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.3
ISBN: 0070059284
Dewey Decimal Number: 527
EAN: 9780070059283
ASIN: 0070059284
Publication Date: November 1, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
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Product Description
There is deep mystery and profound satisfaction in finding your position on earth by reference to the sun, moon, and stars--not to mention profound relief when the GPS receiver stops working in mid-passage. That is why knowledge of celestial navigation is still a rite of initiation, and its practice still a favorite pastime among serious cruisers. That this edition of Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen should appear 44 years after the first British edition and 27 years after its first publication in the U.S. is eloquent testimony to the author's clear, concise explanation of a difficult skill. Through those years, Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen has been the best-known, best-loved primer on the subject throughout the English-speaking world. It successfully teaches sailors who have been demoralized by bigger books. It remains "the famous little book" on celestial navigation. Among other changes, this edition substitutes the Nautical Almanac for the Air Almanac, discusses the "short" tables based on H.O. 211, expands the discussion in a few areas, fine-tunes it in others, and shows how to advance a line of position for a running fix from sun sights. The only mathematics involved are straightforward addition and subtraction. Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen has spawned many imitators over the years, but it's still the best--with this new edition more than ever.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen June 2, 2008
An excellent book for anyone starting to learn celestial navigation. It provides sufficient theory to explain the basics without baffling anyone able to understand simple arithmetic and geometry. This is the best book on this subject that I have read to date.
Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen February 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
An excellent and clearly written book.
Easy to follow and understand.
A must for anyone interested in this subject.
Written by an expert for both beginners and experts.
I am delighted I purchased it.
When your GPS dies October 8, 2007
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a neat little book to read if you're serious about finding your position without the benefit of GPS. It's well written and the computations required are basically only addition and subtraction. You can practice using a GPS instrument to check your sights. (What you will find is that you need a lot of practice to get even close!)
"Are the stars out tonight...?" July 30, 2006
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Celestial navigation, like knots and splices and reading maritime charts and tide tables, is one of the essential sailing skills. Whether you are a daysailer, weekender, blue water cruiser or lone circumnavigator, there WILL come a time when the GPS quits, the Loran won't work, and you're going to say, "Where the &$@!* am I?". If you haven't learned celestial nav at that point you had better be a real quick study or have hired a good estate planning lawyer.
But assuming that Clarence Darrow Dershowitz Kunstler Belli Nizer, Esq. isn't in your crew, Mary Blewitt's book is a good thing to have. Brief, concise, and Ptolemaically simple to understand, Blewitt takes the hocus-pocus out of asking the heavens for directions. The difficulty with learning celestial nav isn't so much the math (as most people want to believe) as it is that modern man is SO far out of touch with the natural world that looking at the night sky is like looking at---something dark and mysterious. However, add a few very basic, easy-to-grasp concepts to your skill set and your Sunfish will suddenly become the Santa Maria.
Knowing celestial navigation will help you to sail anywhere and, even better, to know where you are when you get there. To that end, this book is an invaluable learning tool.
The Truth October 25, 2005
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Before crossing the Atlantic in 1978 on my 22' sailboat, I read many books on celestial navigation and became convinced that it was an inpenetrable subject and then, on reflection, I realized that that could not be so as so many navigators had had less geometry etc than me. I figured the authors did not really know what they were talking about. And then I came across Prof. Blewett at the Boston Museum of Science, teaching on 10 Wednesday evenings. After the first lecture, on the noon sight, she said, if you your boat is going faster than 20 kts then you don't have to come back for more. That is all you need. She was absolutely right. But I did continue -- I took the course so I could do the fun-and-games of star sights too. I can now teach her course in 45 minutes.
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