Celestial Navigation by H.O.249

By John E. Milligan

Book Overview

"Any kind of boating can be fun," the author points out, "racing around the marks, or coastwise cruising where there is almost always at hand visual reference ashore from which bearings can be taken for locating one's position and thus finding one's way home. Severing these ties with land, however, offers a new kind of fun, a new kind of freedom, a freedom from dependence on land." Here is a basic beginner's book, introducing the amateur to the tools, the vocabulary, and the techniques of celestial navigation. Among the recommended tools are the H. O. 249 tables, the most widely used among amateur navigators at sea because of their simplicity. The ability to determine one's position at sea both liberates the sailor from the land and enables him to find his way to his destination. If you can read, add and subtract, understand angles, and use a protractor, you can learn to navigate in your armchair or at sea from Celestial Navigation by H. O. 249.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870331914
• ISBN13: 9780870331916
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Cornell Maritime Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.9" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview of the oldest means of navigation

Sailors, from the most serious of circumnavigators and racers, to the armchair-navigator will enjoy this classic on celestial navigation. "Steering by the stars" - an art perfected by ancient Polynesians who were navigating the Pacific to Hawai`i - as if it were a pond - over 1000 years before western Europeans left sight of their coasts.... also look for a new title by John "Stu" Milligan, The Rainbow Quest - his first-person account of the 1969 TransPacific Yacht Race, from Long Beach Calif to Honolulu Hawai`i - you can read excerpts from this well-written adventure on the high seas on the web at: http://holoholo.org/wycnews/transpac/ and aslo check out the action in this years Transpac'97 race.... Direct From Diamond Head Via WebXpress... be there... aloha... danno