fantasticspeller

GPS navigation was in it's infancy and pricey. “Dithering” was standard for the the next ten years, while satellites were available only 12 hours per day. Complicating the problem – our nautical charts were often ancient. I remember drooling over a Magellan GPS in West Marine. Surely the prices on the cheapest model would soon drop.

As part of our preparation to cast off in the fall of '89 from Seattle, I bought a sextant and learned how to use it. With practiced I could often figure our position within a mile or two. Heading down the Pacific Coast we mainly used LORAN, which worked like a champ until San Diego. Heading further south on our passage to Cabo San Lucas the LORAN was totally useless as we were too far from the land stations. It was time to put that sextant to use.

Envision bobbing up and down on a 40-foot sailboat, adjusting the mirrors of the sextant to view the Sun and the horizon simultaneously, then yelling “Mark!” so my wife, Candace, could note the exact time. I fed the readings and time into a hand calculator to arrive at the estimated position. All-the-while I fought off sea-sickness to focus on not making a computational mistake. The trick was to take several sightings, plot them all, and average the three most closely clustered points. As a retired actuary I was comfortable dealing with averages. I could now point to the chart and say – “on average we're right here!”

Two days before arriving in Cabo there was a big storm that hid the Sun. The sextant was useless and we were approaching land. Luckily the shoreline depths were moderately steady. I used the depth sounder and radar to estimate our distance from shore, and after several tense moments, we arrived in Cabo San Lucas. Considering the stress in navigating the southern Baja, then extrapolating those problems to the low atolls of the Tuamotus and other South Pacific islands, I was ready to bite the bullet and buy a pricey Magellan. It now seemed cheap compared to our lives.

After some difficulty with Mexican customs the Magellan GPS arrived in February, 1990. The total cost, including an external antenna was $3,400. It was worth every penny. We sailed off into the sunset and life was good.