Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Today I signed up for a remote learning ASA107 – Celestial Navigation. I’ve always been fascinated by the navigation side of sailing and find the concepts fairly easy to grasp. The ultimate step is to navigate using just your watch, the heavens and a trusty sextant. While I don’t think I’ll ever travel without GPS, the sextant is an invaluable backup in case of events that either take out the boats electronics (like lightening) or a systemic issue with the GPS system itself. I also half fancy trying to travel a significant distance relying on dead reckongng and celestial but I wonder if I could ever resist the temptation to see where I am using the GPS. I’m now looking forward to getting the materials to read. If they arrive in time I may just take them to the BVIs to while away some of the plane and other travel time.

Training for Helen, Ben, Sam and myself has now been booked. I asked about bulk discounts and they normally only apply to parties of 12 or more. Turns out that we’re the first family they’ve had come as a group so we were offered a $25 per head discount as a family discount. Nice for us and perhaps a good inducement for other families in the future.

So the next thing to figure out is what to do in the area for the period we’re there and to figure out if we should extend our trip around the dates we’re there to pick up some extra sites. Apparantly there is enough time each day to pack in extras like hikes and mountain biking. The area around Flagstaff is pretty lively. We have a full day off in the middle of our training which we could use to go and see Meteor Crater or the Grand Canyon perhaps. Depending on where we fly into, we could take in some sights on the journey to and from Flagstaff.