Customer Reviews

The Complete On-Board Celestial Navigator : Includes 2003-2007 Nautical Almanac

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even if you new to the stars, you will no longer be in the dark! This book guides you through it all. It lays open allowing you to see what it is you are looking at and doing, great for both the novice & the all knowing. I enjoyed it just on the porch so when I used it underway at sea it was just as wonderful! Very much worth the price this book has it all!

This book has it all, almanac, tables, starfinder, in short, everything need to do sight reductions. A fantastic value !

While Mr. Bennett clearly qualifies as as authority in celestial navigation, this book is not well suited for beginners. The narrative is a bit to succint, forcing the reader to try and and "fill in the blanks" in order to understand what the author has stated. Modern publishing makes it easier to present tables and examples with the narrative; however, in this book the tables and examples are at the rear of the book, which makes switching back and forth difficult. The main advantage of this book are the tables. In my opinion this is a good resource book and a celestial navigation reference guide, but not as your first celestial navigation primer.

As another reader already said - this is not a book for beginners. For someone interested in learning celestial navigation, one would like more background information.

But if you already into navigation with a pocket calculator or computer based and want to have an idea how a table based method works to realize how much easier it is with the calculator, this book is perfect for you.

Last but not least, this book is perfect as a backup system when a lightning destroyed all your electronic devices.

I bought this because it combines the functions of nautical almanac and sight reduction tables in one slender volume. It provides five years of star data, sample worksheets and lots of worked out examples. So it's a lot easier than hauling around Nautical Almanacs and 3-volume sight reduction tables.

The tables trade compactness for accuracy. Sights and positions are taken to the nearest minute of latitude or longitude, rather than 10ths of minutes in the standard celestial navigation tables. I don't mind the loss of accuracy; my sights are pretty loose to begin with, and it's hard to imagine an emergency short of nuclear war where I'd actually have to depend on celestial navigation. I'm learning it only because I want to do a Transpac race and the rules require that four lines of position be determined during the race.

Also, to keep the tables small, the sight reduction methodology is non-standard and requires a few extra steps compared to the normal "Bowditch-approved" method. The geometry behind them is completely opaque, so you have to take them on faith unless you are a true expert in celestial navigation techniques. But, once you get the hang of it, it's a straightforward sequence of arithmetic sums.

The author includes a couple of methods for determining azimuth, one by table lookup and one by the use of "Weir diagrams." The latter look interesting but the explanation in the book is completely incomprehensible and I couldn't find another reference that even mentioned them.

This excellent "manual" contains everything needed to perform celestial navigation at sea, or to practice the skills at home. The manual contains an instructional section at the beginning describing the process, followed by complete tables and nautical almanac for 2003-2007, providing everything needed to plot one's position with nothing more than a pencil, paper, and of course the sextant.

I took this book on my single-handed cruise to the Bahamas in 2006, as a back-up to my GPS, and also for practice and the fun and challenge of navigating by the stars. While my GPS never failed me in open water sailing, I still plotted my position by sun and stars several times on the trip, and was very greatful to have everything I needed in one compact book, given how extremely precious space on a small sailboat can be.

One consideration is that the instructions at the beginning will not give nearly as in-depth a lesson into the theory and complexities of celestial navigation as other purely instructional books will give. The book will, however, provide complete instruction for a rusty mind that hasn't performed a sight reduction in a long time, or someone who otherwise has some grasp on the concept. I personally learned celestial navigation simply from a few online instructional sites that give general overviews along with the instructions in this book. I rate the book at 5 stars because I think the "instructional" section is the perfect length for a book of this purpose.

The Complete On-Board Celestial Navigator is an excellent "everything but the sextant" handbook to use for recreational or back-up celestial navigation in today's world.

I used this as a beginner, and although I found the explanations at times confusing, working through the practice problems and making my own sights made it clear what to do. A great resource to have, though not one to learn basic theory from. But then again, this is not the purpose of this publication, either.

Excellent resource if you wish to manually navigate or if you find yourself in a situation which precludes using GPS.

The information in the 1999 edition is now out of date. Buy a new one!