About me

Over the last twenty years, blue-water sailing has been one of my favourite leisure activities. And while enjoying the modern unpretentious way-of-navigation on the seas, I became very fascinated by the nautical skills in navigation and practical seamanship the ancient Sumerian, Phoenician and Polynesian navigators must have had. I also began to understand the exceptional nautical accomplishments of the Renaissance-time 'world navigators'.

On this background, particularly the history and practice of 'traditional' Celestial Navigation (using a sextant, a Nautical Almanac and some pre-compiled Tables) have become special topics of interest. So I started looking for information on these issues.

About these Web Pages

My occupation with Celestial Navigation over the last two decades was the primary reason why these web pages were originally created. The purpose was to assemble the complete information needed for practical Celestial Navigation. I especially intended to compile all the essential information for practising Celestial Navigation in such a form that it can be performed without the necessity of any on-board electronic resources such as calculators or computers.

To the best of my knowledge, in the early 2000 years this was - and maybe still is - the first and only internet site, supplying all the information needed for Celestial Navigation (Nautical Almanac, Interpolation Tables, Sextant Correction Tables, Sight Reduction Tables, Worksheets and Instructions) from a single source in a complete and consistent form. And moreover it still is completely free of charge and free of advertisement!

In the meantime my original "celestial project" has now been integrated in my "nautical web pages", which now also cover other aspects of navigation, as well as technical and historical issues related to sailing. I enjoyed compiling these web pages and I hope you may find something useful among the different topics! But keep in mind that these pages have been collected to serve as my private source of information for sailing related issues. As a consequence you cannot expect to find a complete guide on the different topics covered here. The available information is rather incomplete and severely biased to my personal interests. Furthermore, no warranty can be given for the correctness of any of the supplied information (see "Terms of Usage" below).

Feedback

These web pages do not pretend to be a complete guide to any of the available topics. Their principal purpose is to serve as my personal source of information on sailing issues. I would of course enjoy it very much if the information available from this site would also be of practical use to other people. But, please notice that there is no guarantee that all of the available information is correct. Particularly much of the tabulated date for Celestial Navigation is generated with computer programs, which may still contain some uncovered bugs.

If you find wrong data or false information, but also if you have found something useful here, please feel free to send me your feedback and comments.

Terms of Usage for the Data and Tables related to Navigation

Most of the downloadable manuals available from this web site are generated with computer programs, which still contain uncovered bugs. Other information on regulations, assignments or recommendations may be outdated or unreliable. Although all information and data from this site is believed to be accurate, it is explicitly stated that no warranty is given for it's correctness.

Use the navigation related data and tables available from this web site only for training and exercising!
If data from this site is used for live navigation, please ALWAYS verify the obtained position with another - reliable - method of navigation.