can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

Mazu - Day 6 - Practicing Ancient Mariner Skills (with a modern twist)



Today was another glorious sunny day, making good progress with following winds. Life doesn’t get much better. So it was that we managed to turn our attention to obtaining weather faxes and trying my hand at a little celestial navigation.

We had been poring through various publications to try and obtain weather faxes but had until today come up short. Finally as I dug a little deeper into information on Sailmail (one of our at sea emails), I happened upon the text we needed to send to Saildocs that would return weather faxes. Now we can see a traditional weather chart with isobars, Highs, Lows, cold and warm fronts, etc. so we can have a much better bigger picture of what’s going on. It supports all the other information we have. That was success number one.

Then, Mike kindly helped to teach me (Hope) about how to use the sextant. I took several sunshots, then put those into a handy app on my iPad and out popped the discrepancy from our GPS position. Much to my surprise, they were within about 30 miles of our true position. Success number two.

Now I need to stop because the wind is picking up and we need to put a reef into the mainsail for the evening and night hours (after I finish my tea).

Previous | Next