MAX EBB H
ow hard could it be? The GPS displays the position, the digital weather files predict the wind and current, and the routing software knows the polars and optimizes the route. So when a friend of a friend asked if I was available to navigate an ocean race on the East Coast, of course I said yes. All I had to do was push the buttons and take the credit. It was a long flight, a long taxi ride, and a long trip in the yacht club launch. It was overcast, raining, and almost dark when we finally found the right boat in the mooring field. "What's with this rain in the summer?" I complained after stowing my gear and introducing myself to the crew. "Don't worry, it's predicted to clear up a day after our start, so we'll have clear skies for star shots," assured the owner and skipper. "And now that you're here, let's get started with the pre-race briefing." This was the first indication that we were entered in the Celestial Only Division. No GPS, no internet weather, no computer for route optimization. "That’s why we asked you to bring your sextant, Max," explained the skipper as he assembled the crew around the table in the boat's main salon. "We get a big rating credit for entering in the Celestial Division. Yes, we're going to do it the old fashioned way." "All the better," I said with concealed terror. "It's been a long time since I used celestial in anger, but I'm up for it." Fortunately I did have the old sextant with me, but I thought this would be like TransPac, where all they want is a couple of token lines of position in the logbook for show. Now I learned that celestial would be our primary means of finding our position all the way across — and me without so much as a nautical almanac or a copy of H.O. 249.
O
ur skipper went on to lecture the crew about the boat's safety gear, how we would have our harness tethers clipped in all the time on deck, the watch system, and a hundred other details. Meanwhile, I slid over to the chart table and discreetly turned on the computer. It had a broadband internet connection as long as we were in port. I typed Lee Helm's email address, then the message: "Lee, Max here. It turns out we are
entered in the Celestial Division. Do you have a program for sight reduction? Is it small enough to email? Please respond ASAP, much appreciated." The skipper had turned the lecture over to the cook, who was outlining the menu, the operation of the stove, and how galley clean-up would be rotating among the various watch standers. No response from Lee. She must be offline. Maybe a "tweet" would reach her: "MAYDAY!" I typed. "Entered in Celestial Division. Need sight reduction program!" Thank Poseidon she was monitoring her portable device, whatever it was. She replied almost immediately: I'm on campus, will send via remote. Thank Poseidon again that she had remote access to her computer. And a few minutes later there was an email, with an attachment, in my webmail inbox. But something must have gone wrong — the attachment was only 140 kilobytes, just a fraction of the size of the average digital photo, and certainly not big enough to be an entire celestial navigation software package. I dragged it into a new folder anyway, and clicked on what looked like the executable. The program was up and running instantly, without so much as a hint of an installation wizard to wade through.
I
breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was the program I had remembered: the old DOS program with a nice, simple command-line interface. And it seemed to be running fine on the ship's hardware. Just in time, too, because right after our cook finished disclosing where all the night watch snacks were stowed, the skipper turned it over to me. "Now Max will say a few words about celestial navigation on this race." I brought up the screen for "dawn, dusk and transit times" to see what sort of objects we would have. Not much Moon — it was preceding the Sun this week, along with most of the other planets. "All the action will be at dawn on this voyage," I said. "As you all probably know, celestial navigation works best when it's dark enough to see the stars and planets, but light enough to see a clear horizon. For a good position
"U get 2 have all the fun."
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Latitude 38
• July, 2009
fix it's useful to observe several different celestial bodies at about the same time. This means I'll have to be up before dawn every morning, when I can get the Moon, Venus and Jupiter. Maybe Mars, too, although I see it's only about two degrees away from Venus so it won't provide any new information." As I spoke, my confidence increased, thanks to this little program. It was making me look smart. "We'll lose the Moon after a day or two," I continued. "So the pre-dawn Venus and Jupiter shots will be important. The Sun will be rising at . . . let's see . . ." Something was wrong. This thing was putting sunrise at 2 a.m. and sunset at 4 in the afternoon. Fortunately, the DOS window with the nav program did not completely cover up the window for incoming messages. U R in EDT zone. GMT-4. Lee. Of course. Lee had read my mind; I had been subtracting seven instead of four from GMT to get local time. "Sunrise is at 5 in the morning, so the
