brought to the edge of tears by the simplest of things: a sudden burst of sunlight from behind a cloud, or a pleasing notion, or a particularly vivid thought of a loved one. And the simple act of standing at the wheel, watching the red sails billowing into the sky, and feeling the great black hull surging swiftly through the waves, filled me with ineffable delight. I suspected that the others were similarly affected, but these were private thoughts and we left them unsaid. Tom, as skipper, was constantly occupied with the maintenance of his beloved boat and by extension the safety and well-being of the crew. He would strip down the diesel engine and clean the injectors, cast an eye on the wear and tear of the running gear (the ropes and sails), which suffered from constant chafing, and stay aware of our course and position, as well as finding useful things for us to do.
Ros looked after the galley, keeping us well fed and happy. Curry, which she did well, has an almost supernatural effect on a wet, cold crew on a nasty night at sea. And for much of the day she would be teaching and reading to Hannah. The rest of us would take it in turns at the helm, trim the sails, and do whatever tasks Tom had allotted to us. And on the odd occasions when the sun deigned to appear, everyone would rush onto the deck and try to fix our position with a sextant.
Mike, John, and Patrick were making use of the trip to brush up on their navigation techniques, taking advantage of Tom’s considerable skill. This was long before the days of GPS, and an ability to use the sextant was essential for ocean navigation, quite apart from the fact that mastery of this traditional instrument was an art in itself. Navigators have relied upon this beautiful device of gleaming brass for hundreds of years, and just to slip one out of its case and hold it to your eye casts you into the unbroken spell of time that links you to Columbus, Magellan, or Henry the Navigator.
The ideal time to take a sun sight on a sextant is at noon, although of course this is not always possible, as the sun is not necessarily shining at noon, especially in the dismal latitudes toward which we were heading. In theory, though, you can take a sight at other times of the day as long as the sun is visible above the horizon and you have an accurate watch. But if it isn’t noon, it complicates the calculations no end.
On our boat, if the sun were visible just before noon, the navigators would gather on deck and prepare their instruments. Then, as the moment of the zenith approached,they would adjust the ingenious little smoked mirrors to catch the exact moment the sun ceased its climb and started to drop. That was exact celestial noon, and the figures so accurately etched into the brass arms and arcs of the sextant could now be read off and entered into the calculations. This was also an opportunity to check the accuracy of the chronometers, that is, our watches.
Next everyone would tumble down the ladder to the chart table, where there would be a frenzy of calculations and poring over navigation tables. Then there would be such sucking of pencils, and muttering and leafing through pages gray with tan and cosine and sine, and date coefficients and declination and other unfathomable logarithms, until the final calculation was made and an estimate of our position arrived at.
Although I dearly wanted to be involved, there were only three sextants onboard and it became obvious that if I were to muscle in on the master classes, it would all become a bit of a scrum. For the first couple of days, I graciously bowed out. But on the third day the desire to navigate got too much for me; I cracked, and, seizing a moment in the afternoon when everyone else had returned to their bunks or allotted tasks, I crept up on deck with Tom’s sextant and took my own sight. It wasn’t a particularly opportune moment to take a reading, but it would have to do. Unhurriedly and with all the figures at my
Ros looked after the galley, keeping us well fed and happy. Curry, which she did well, has an almost supernatural effect on a wet, cold crew on a nasty night at sea. And for much of the day she would be teaching and reading to Hannah. The rest of us would take it in turns at the helm, trim the sails, and do whatever tasks Tom had allotted to us. And on the odd occasions when the sun deigned to appear, everyone would rush onto the deck and try to fix our position with a sextant.
Mike, John, and Patrick were making use of the trip to brush up on their navigation techniques, taking advantage of Tom’s considerable skill. This was long before the days of GPS, and an ability to use the sextant was essential for ocean navigation, quite apart from the fact that mastery of this traditional instrument was an art in itself. Navigators have relied upon this beautiful device of gleaming brass for hundreds of years, and just to slip one out of its case and hold it to your eye casts you into the unbroken spell of time that links you to Columbus, Magellan, or Henry the Navigator.
The ideal time to take a sun sight on a sextant is at noon, although of course this is not always possible, as the sun is not necessarily shining at noon, especially in the dismal latitudes toward which we were heading. In theory, though, you can take a sight at other times of the day as long as the sun is visible above the horizon and you have an accurate watch. But if it isn’t noon, it complicates the calculations no end.
On our boat, if the sun were visible just before noon, the navigators would gather on deck and prepare their instruments. Then, as the moment of the zenith approached,they would adjust the ingenious little smoked mirrors to catch the exact moment the sun ceased its climb and started to drop. That was exact celestial noon, and the figures so accurately etched into the brass arms and arcs of the sextant could now be read off and entered into the calculations. This was also an opportunity to check the accuracy of the chronometers, that is, our watches.
Next everyone would tumble down the ladder to the chart table, where there would be a frenzy of calculations and poring over navigation tables. Then there would be such sucking of pencils, and muttering and leafing through pages gray with tan and cosine and sine, and date coefficients and declination and other unfathomable logarithms, until the final calculation was made and an estimate of our position arrived at.
Although I dearly wanted to be involved, there were only three sextants onboard and it became obvious that if I were to muscle in on the master classes, it would all become a bit of a scrum. For the first couple of days, I graciously bowed out. But on the third day the desire to navigate got too much for me; I cracked, and, seizing a moment in the afternoon when everyone else had returned to their bunks or allotted tasks, I crept up on deck with Tom’s sextant and took my own sight. It wasn’t a particularly opportune moment to take a reading, but it would have to do. Unhurriedly and with all the figures at my
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