Product Description
With just four required items: 1-This all inclusive book (with simple terms, teaches you how to use a sextant/navigate and includes all celestial data needed till the year 2056), 2-sextant, 3-compass and 4-universal time (shortwave radio or time piece) you can navigate the globe by using latitude and longitude derived from the sun with these four items and have peace of mind knowing that you have a reliable backup to GPS. Once you have your position in latitude and longitude, this book teaches you basic navigation (destination, heading and distance), so you will never be lost.For safety reasons and because equipment fails, batteries die, and equipment falls overboard, people going to sea should have at least two different methods of navigation. The preferred primary method is using a GPS system. This book will teach a secondary backup method of my version of the “Noon Shot Fix”.If you are headed offshore, just curious about celestial navigation or have an old sextant and wonder how it works, buy this book with the other required items and you won’t be disappointed. This book can be read in a short amount of time with sextant readings starting immediately. This book is a combination of basic theory, teaching only what you need for a noon shot fix and basic navigation/plotting, along with a checklist type form to calculate your position, all inclusive celestial data, many “completed” examples and information on emergency navigation.There are many other great celestial navigation techniques out there that people use every day, however many of these techniques require more dedication to learn/use. My goal was to create a simple book, that could be used by the average person with no background on the subject, and contain all the information needed that could be called on in a time of emergency. Anyone with basic math skills can learn/use this technique.

About the Author
Greg was a Second Class Petty Officer in the US Navy, a Sergeant in the US Marine Corps Reserve and has a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. //

Douglas Smith

5.0 out of 5 stars
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2017
An easy path to basic celestial navigation
In today’s world, it is incredibly easy for a casual, or even an experienced sailor to become totally dependent on GPS for the safe navigation of his vessel. For any sailor who ventures beyond sight of land and club house flag of his home marina, it is dangerous to be lulled into this dependency!

GPS receivers, and even the GPS satellite system are not perfect. Receivers fail, batteries go dead, and satellites suffer outages. Every sailor should possess the navigation and piloting skills necessary to bring his vessel safely home in an emergency.

The most basic “backup” navigation and piloting technique, using a sextant to compute Lat/Long and a magnetic compass to reckon direction, requires no power, electronics or radio navigation signals.

Unfortunately, teaching oneself celestial navigation is an overwhelming task for the average boater! A naval, or merchant marine officer dedicates an entire one semester course to this topic.

Greg Boyle’s book is not a comprehensive guide to celestial navigation. It will never find a home in an Annapolis classroom! But it will teach a complete neophyte a few basic celestial navigation and piloting techniques sufficient to bring him safely home in an emergency.

The celestial navigation portion of the book is dedicated almost exclusively to one specific celestial observation – observation of the sun at “Local Apparent Noon” (LAN).
This one technique is an excellent choice for emergency navigation:
• The LAN sun is one of the easiest observations to make with a sextant
• This single sextant observation yields BOTH Latitude and Longitude
• The “reduction” of the LAN observation to a Lat/Long fix is relatively easy

Greg’s book provides a step by step guide to the LAN shot. Everything from calibrating and observing with a sextant, to a simplified method of computing the “fix”. Numerous examples are included.

Any reader with a calculator and an understanding of very simple algebra will soon be successfully “shooting the sun”.

The book also teaches the reader basic piloting techniques which require only a magnetic compass.

I recommend this book to a newcomer who wishes to learn emergency navigation, and especially to sailors who have “tried and failed” to learn celestial navigation using other books.

Most average sailors will successfully complete this course. They will experience that special (and usually surprising) satisfaction the first time they shoot the sun, and using only a sextant and an accurate watch, compute a Lat/Long position which MIRACULOUSLY agrees with their GPS!