Custom Log Book

by John May 18, 2005
Custom marine log book page from aluminum expedition sailboat Morgan's Cloud.

Question: I read your article, “Knowing Where You Are“, in January’s Cruising World magazine and was wondering if I could see a copy of your custom log book page.

Magnetic Compass

by John May 18, 2005

Question: Do you use a magnetic compass to augment your navigation process?

Time Signals for Sextant

by John May 18, 2005

Question: Do you still do sights with a sextant? If so, where do you get the time signal from when underway? I found several shortwave frequencies for time signals on the web but the reception is extremely poor. In fact, I can’t get any useful exact time at all with my SSB receiver (Lowe HF-150 [...]

Trans-Ocean Navigation

by John September 18, 2009
The chart shows various great circle (dotted orange) and rhumb line (solid gray lines). Counter intuitively, the curved courses are actually shorter. The difference between the two tracks is almost nonexistent on the Caribbean to US east coast passage; larger on the westbound trans-Atlantic passage; and very large on the eastbound trans-Atlantic passage, to the point that the great circle course takes you over land and the iceberg infested Grand Banks—a good reason to understand which type of course your GPS is using!

Question: We are crossing the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to St. Lucia. I found a large scale chart of the Atlantic (Imray Passage Chart 100). This single chart shows the entire Atlantic Ocean taking the earth’s curvature into account and therefore does NOT have a compass rose to help steer by. I am having [...]