Navigation Before Satellites? How did they use a Sextant?
Sextant is what people used for centuries for marine navigation. In this video, I look at what is a sextant and how is it used for navigation? Before GPS navigation became the standard for boat navigation, sailors, open water boaters, and ocean crossing boaters used a sextant to help navigate and determine their location in the ocean. A marine navigation sextant can be used to identify longitude and latitude and our location on the open water. With practice, it can be used to calculate a position out in the ocean with under 1 nautical mile of accuracy.
Using a sextant for marine navigation is challenging and takes practice. But on open waters, it is a useful tool if you are skilled enough with it especially if GPS navigation systems fail. Marine navigation, blue water boating, nautical navigation, navigation by the stars, and solo sailing without electronics are all possible with a working sextant, tables, nautical charts, accurate clocks and a compass.
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00:00 Introduction
01:16 What replaced the sextant
02:14 Looking at my 60 year old Davis Mark 3 Standard Marine Sextant
03:12 How a sextant works for nautical navigation
07:00 Conclusion
If you're interested in purchasing some sextant related items from Amazon I have provided some links below:
Buy a new version of the Davis Mark 3 (like mine) https://amzn.to/4aLLsg9
Buy a Davis Mark 25 (a much better one!) https://amzn.to/41TWQCw
Brass vintage looking sextant for decoration or display https://amzn.to/3vypNba
The Sextant Handbook https://amzn.to/3tNIoiM
GPS Backup with Mark 3 Sextant (book) https://amzn.to/3HgGElc
Celestial Navigation Home Study Course https://amzn.to/41RY3tW
As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
Sextants and other old forms of navigating the ocean were used before we had satellites which gave us the ability to develop global positioning (GPS) to determine our location in the ocean and other open waters away from shore. Navigating a boat without GPS was a much more technically challenging way to determine a boat's location in the ocean or large bodies of water.
#sextant #navigation #sailing #celestialnavigation #gpsnavigation
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