Section 2: Celestial Position Fixing (Challenge Questions)

Question 1

Imagine that you are the Master on board an oil tanker on a ten-day trans-Atlantic voyage. You want to have the GPS position verified once daily using celestial navigation methods and also obtain compass errors every watch. You also want to share this workload between the third, second and chief mate. The third mate does the 8-12 watches, the second mate does the 12-4 watches and the chief mate does 4-8 watches. How would you establish a system to achieve the objectives?

Answer 1

3rd Mate - Intercept
2nd Mate - MERPASS
Chief Mate - Azimuth

Question 2

What are the precautions and limitations of using the celestial methods of navigation?