Wednesday, December 26, 2007

A Merry Christmas Gift

I thought he was kidding when he said he was going to give me the sun, moon, and stars.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cute. And I'm glad that some people in this world know how to work such things. 'cause I sure don't. :)

Bethany said...

It's a good thing it came with an instructional DVD, several plotting tools and a workbook or I would have no hope of figuring it out. But I really enjoy the book-learning part of sailing. This year, my goal is to acquaint myself with enough meteorology to be able to read weather maps without the help of a trained weatherperson and to learn how to locate my family on the globe without the use of a GPS. (some parents just buy their kids a cell phone:)

A sextant is also useful near the land. You can triangulate your position from the angles of two known landmarks, or can figure out your distance from land using the charted height of one landmarks. That's the theory; we'll see how well I do this summer. I'm thankful we'll have a few years in sight of land to practice.