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Celestial
1982 Nautical Almanac Selections
Table date needed to work the sights in "Victoria to Maui — A Celestial Navigation Practice Voyage." If you do not have an almanac of any year, then you will also need the increments and corrections data, also here in the Library.
 
Arc to Arcturus
If you have not seen it yet, you can "arc to Arcturus" in our StarPilot section. It is an old navigator's trick for remembering part of the stars — which stresses the value of associating star declinations with places they pass over head. (Even young navigators can use it.)
 
Increments and Corrections
E-book version of the Increments and Corrections part of the Nautical Almanac. Note that if you have a printed almanac from any year at all you do not need these tables. They are the same in any version, and this is a large file to download. It is just a backup if needed.
 
La lune est menteuse
French phrases, moon phases, and related Celtic symbols that tell us the phase of the moon.
 
NAO Tables
NAO Tables and Instructions on how to use them
 
Plot LOPs with e-chart programs
Remember that all modern charting programs can also plot celestial LOPs very conveniently and then print them. We don't mean using their celestial navigation options, which many include (these may not even have plot options included), but just their standard chart plotting tools and the blank plotting sheet page. This note explains how to do it, and gives some examples. A related use of e-chart programs for solving all vector problems now covered with more examples in the book Radar for Mariners.
 
Sight Reduction with GPS
A strange combo of the old and the new that might come in handy someday if your GPS signals are lost and you do not have sight reduction tables (nor our StarPilot program!). Can also be used to numerically check your work, not to mention that the whole process is a great reminder of how celestial navigation works in the first place.
Coastal
Bowditch Glossary
The full copy of Bowditch is online as listed elsewhere here, but we have found that our most frequent reference to the book is to look up definitions in the Glossary. Hence we offer that here separately. You have here both the primary link to the US gov source and a back up to our archived copy since the gov links tend to wander around.
 
Fast GPS Plotting
Instructions and illustrations on how to make a card for very quick accurate plotting of Lat-Lon positions on a chart. Easy to make and easy to use. Ideal for racing. Perfect for plotting on folio or small-craft charts, which are typically very difficult to plot on.
General
Data Reduction and Error Analysis
A book on errors, probabilities, and analysis for physical sciences and navigation. Covers such things as probability curves, least squares, accuracy, precision, mean values, and so on.
 
History of GPS
A video interview on the history of GPS
Medicine at Sea
med kits and radio support
A Seattle based organization of doctors working with Swedish Hospital to provide maritime and backwoods medical support. They offer radio support and coordination with Swedish as well as sell special medical kits for mariners and travelers.
Nav Rules
Nav Rules Bibliography
An annotated bibliography on the Navigation Rules. There are many books on this subject and some cost a great deal of money and some are not so well known. This document is intended to help readers sort out what might be best for their needs.
Weather
BC Weather Services
This pamphlet from Environment Canada is equivalent to the US Marine Weather Services Charts and just as valuable for traveling in BC waters. It is hard to find in print in the US, and they do not make an electronic version, so we have made this one available to mariners ourselves. They have a different procedure of reporting buoy data in a separate sequence from lighthouse data, so having the maps and lists of reporting stations here is very valuable. It is called Mariner's Guide -- West Coast Marine Weather Services.
 
Fax Schedules
Latest weather Fax Schedules from the National Weather Service.
 
Interactive daily wx schedule
If you do not make a schedule like this before you leave, you will certainly have one made by the time your voyage is over. It is essentially mandatory. Lists when various products are available and when they are valid. This one made for the 2004 Pacific Cup yacht race is annotated with actual internet links to the products for practice before departure as well as the file names that can be used to request the products by email.
 
Marine Weather Resources.
The Weather Trainer comes with an extensive set of references called Weather Resources. A couple of these are dated products. This link lets you get the latest versions of these.
 
MSC-15 AK Waters
The last MSC chart available is for AK, which has a complicated reporting system depicted on this two-side chart. There were originally 13 of these, but this is the last one that is supported and kept up to date. This document replaces the earlier Marine Weather Guide to Alaska,
 
Vic-Maui Waypoints
There is actually a book behind this cover photo, but what is really needed in the end are just these waypoints. If you are sailing from WA to Maui, you should have a very good reason for not passing each one of these within some 100 miles or so. Sailing to more southern islands, rotate the second half of the route down to the island destination.