Is Celestial Navigation Dead?

Last week in this column, I recounted a repair we made to a malfunctioning hand-held GPS half way up the Red Sea by putting the disassembled unit into a warm oven to remove any moisture. That worked. Several readers sent me emails to comment on the fix, which I had deemed essential to safe navigation in the Red Sea. One from Dick Stevenson is below in the Up Front column. Another was from my old friend and noted cruising expert Pam Wall. “George. Just reading your oven “fix” for your electronics and was kind of amazed you never mentioned DR and celestial navigation skills and all the accompaniments like sextant, up to date Nautical Almanac, tables, etc., which  I think are priorities for offshore cruising yachts to have aboard, and know how to use. Plus Mary Blewett’s book, etc., just in case you have a complete electrical outage!!”  In my reply to Pam, I noted that she and I are somewhat old school having done a lot of voyaging before GPS was invented, relying solely on celestial. And, I also noted that in the last 20 years, I have made almost annual offshore passages of 1,500 miles or more on friends’ boats and not once did those skippers and crews haul out a sextant or open a Nautical Almanac. Instead, the boat and just about every crewmember carried extra GPS hand-held units or tablets equipped with GPS receivers as back-ups to the primary GPS and MFD. The bet we are making is that we can survive a lightning strike and the loss of the main electronics with hand-held GPSs. The GPS satellite navigation system has never failed. But, it could. Should we be prepared for that by learning celestial navigation? Let us know what you think. You can email me at george@bwsailing.com.