Did my first noon sextant sight today! I’m fairly happy with the results. My calculations were 10 minutes
of arc off from the sight taken by the first mate, whose sight is of course considered authoritative :-)
The calculations are not onerous and with current tables take maybe 5 minutes if you have to do
interpolations , which we didn’t.
The next classes will be on lines of position and plotting which is also cool.
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| My first Sun sight. Photo by David Bellows |
We had a workshop on anchoring today. The Picton Castle has anchors and anchor chain sufficient for a
500 ton ship which is nearly twice our size. We actually have 4 anchors on board, the 1500 lb port fisherman’s anchor and the 1200 lb stbd navy stockless. In the hold we have another big fisherman anchor and a 200 lb danforth kedge anchor. The anchor chain weights a ton per shot which is 90′.
In modern maritime circles anchoring is considered more as an emergency tool rather than a standard
mooring. That is because most ships go alongside now rather than anchoring out. The Captain prefers to
anchor out as it keeps the rats and cockroaches (both two legged and multi-legged) away.
Night watch was uneventful and cloudy so no star identifications for me.
Thanks for reading.
KJ
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