THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610180236
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: COVER STORY
SOURCE: BY DAVE MCCARTER, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 168 lines
THE SEARCH for meaning in the cosmos can be traced to the ancients.
In constellations, they pictured the stars bedecking the necks and wrists of mighty, mythical gods and goddesses, and as strange dot-to-dot outlines for animals, archers and objects.
But is there anything written in the stars that you haven't already read? Maybe.
Using tools designed centuries ago that look more like pieces of art than working instruments, some women and men still look for direction in the sun and stars. They are sailors who employ celestial navigation, and they can still swing the arc of a sextant, plot positions and determine angles, arcs and vectors that would make a math major cringe, all in a quest to set a straight and steady course.
``There are still a lot of folks doing it, but it is not an easy thing to master,'' said veteran sailor Terry Gannon of Colington Harbour. ``Celestial navigation is definitely an art.''
``Yeah, it tended to kinda intimidate a lot of the men, for sure,'' Willie Etheridge Jr., 75, said of his fellow crewmen aboard the Coast Guard ship where he learned to use the stars to steer. ``Not everyone learned it.''
So why do some sailors still do it today, when satellite navigational systems make using a sextant roughly equivalent to reading the morning paper on a parchment scroll?
Part of it is a product of their pride in the true craft that is sailing. But they add that, despite technology creeping into the world of sailing, steering by the stars will always remain crucial as long as extended ocean journeys are undertaken.
On those ink-black Outer Banks evenings when it seems that there are a million stars out, there are really only about 6,000 visible to the human eye. An average navigator regularly uses no more than 20 or 30, according to the American Practical Navigator (known to sailors as ``Bowditch,'' after the tome's original author, Nathaniel Bowditch.)
Other than Polaris, called the pole star because of its useful proximity to the celestial north pole, there are 19 first magnitude stars and 38 second magnitude stars. Some that area sailors say they use on ship include brilliant blue Rigel, which glows just west of Orion's belt; Spica, a bright star that can be located by imagining an extension of the Big Dipper's handle; and Vega, the third brightest star in the entire sky.
At this time of year, not many first magnitude stars are visible at our latitude. Vega is there, along with the constellation Pegasus, which looks more like a kite or a baseball diamond than a winged horse. Star charts and more advanced star finders are used by skippers to make sure they have the right star in their sights when they break out the sextant to figure out where they are.
The most common celestial body for sailors - who have a hard time on small boats getting a fix on a start - is the sun, and the moon also can be used.
``The easiest way to explain the basic use of a sextant and the stars in determining location at sea is to imagine yourself standing by a telephone pole,'' said Gannon, a 59-year-old sailor with considerable experience racing sailboats and ``blue-water sailing'' at sea.
``Now mind you, this is terribly oversimplified,'' Gannon said, ``but as you move away from the pole, the pole appears to get shorter. In addition, the relative angle that is created between your position and the top of pole becomes finer and finer.''
Using Gannon's visual, the top of the pole would represent a star in the night sky or the sun at sea.
A sextant would be used to determine the altitude of the star from the horizon, the shaded mirrors of the instrument dropping the celestial body until it brushes the horizon. That angle and the exact time of the sighting would be noted, Gannon said. The location will be off a mile for every four seconds of error on your watch. The exact time, 24 hours a day, can be gotten from a short-wave time station (called Willy Willy Victor by sailors) on the short wave radio. Or sailors use the ship-to-shore radio to call 1-303-499-7111.
Then tables in the chart room would be scoured by the navigator to compute the actual location of the star at that exact time (astronomers have already got that figured out), as opposed to the observed position on the briny deep.
And from the difference in the observed and actual positions of the star, a vector or ``intercept'' can be drawn. Repeat the process with another star, then another, and you have created a triangle that helps pinpoint your real position at sea.
Sound confusing?
You bet it is.
Etheridge, one of the patriarchs of a legendary Outer Banks family of fishermen, learned his technique with a sextant in the Coast Guard during World War II. He now lives in Wanchese and his daughter, Irene, and runs Etheridge Seafood Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills.
``I could work sights and take sights . . . I used sextants a lot,'' said Etheridge. ``I was enlisted, and I picked it up on my own in my spare time.'' That would be spare time between his ship's role in the invasion at Normandy and putting ashore in Burma to help battle the Japanese resistance.
``I was lucky . . . My ship's number was 21, and that's blackjack,'' he laughs.
``To take sights you need a sextant and a stopwatch and a good helper,'' said Etheridge. ``The tables take it from there.''
About the same time Etheridge was swinging the arc in the European theater, advances in radio technology that helped snuff the Axis were also forever changing the face of navigation, celestial or otherwise. By 1943, the Navy and Coast Guard began using radio pulse transmissions to calculate locations at sea. This method of position-fixing, using an electronic ``Loran'' system, would revolutionize navigation. In fact, one of the first Loran test stations was located at Bodie Island, then moved south to Cape Hatteras.
``I would have a tough time making it without a Loran,'' said veteran local captain Omie Tillett, 67, and most local sailors interviewed concur.
``The accuracy of Loran was just so much better,'' said Etheridge. And things only improved in the early '60s with newer systems utilizing satellites.
Bob Buchanan, 76, a sailor from Colington Harbour, admits he, too, would be hard pressed to find his way without some electronic assistance, ``but I do have an absolutely beautiful sextant.''
``It's an old Weems and Splath, and they're among the best,'' he said. Buchanan said his sextant has seen some use, including aiding in the navigation of a Morgan 41 he once owned and helped sail the old-fashioned way from Grenada to Nassau, then from the Bahamas to New Jersey.
On those trips, technical problems reminded him of the main reason skippers still practice with their sextants. ``The bottom line is that the electronic stuff doesn't always work,'' Buchanan said.
And this natural fallibility of systems predicated on man-made variables will always have sailors looking to the sky from time to time, although a good celestrial fix generally is accurate only within a couple of miles, while electronic devices pinpoint the location within a 100 yards or less.
``Look,'' Gannon said, ``it's like driving down the road and cutting a tire At sea, of course, walking is not an option.
``Sure,'' Gannon said, ``taking astral sightings and using your sextant is considered antiquated, but the really good sailors still stay in practice because you always might need it if you're at sea and your systems fail.''
Other than the proud and the very practical, the Coast Guard continues to consider celestial navigational skills necessary for a well-rounded quartermaster.
``It's still part of our training,'' Petty Officer 1st Class Joan Tedeschi said from the Coast Guard station at Hatteras Inlet. ``How much of it you actually put into practice is left to the captain's discretion.
``When I was stationed on a ship in the Pacific, it was mandatory, and it was really neat,'' she said. ``We practiced using a sextant with morning and evening stars, and we could get a good fix using it.''
For other local sailors who, like Tedeschi, still consider navigation by the stars really neat, Gannon said the U.S. Power Squadron is an organization of kindred souls. The College of The Albemarle also periodically offers celestial navigation classes.
``Just about everybody today uses GPS (a global positioning system, using satellites),'' said Buchanan, ``but even a GPS or a Loran will tell you that they are simply aids to dead reckoning navigation.
``Every electronic system can fail.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos including color cover by DREW C. WILSON
Modern devices have not eradicated old systems of traveling on the
sea.
Bob Buchanan, 76, of Colington Harbor, uses a sextant to determine
the altitude and angle of the sun from the horizon in plotting his
location.
This Van Keulen map from 1640 of ``The Carolinas'' - with its many
criss-crossing vectors - would have aided any sailoy[sic] using
celestial navigation while cruising along the coast.
Bob Buchanan also uses a chronometer - a highly accurate timepiece -
to obtain accurate time in plotting his location. Once he determines
the altitude of a star using his sextant, he notes the time to the
second. Then, using astronomical tables, Buchanan finds the location
of the star at that time, and determines the line a certain distance
from the star on which he is located. Then he shoots another star,
goes through the process again and finds where his distance-from-the
star lines intercept. That gives him his actual location. Often a
third star is used to increase the accuracy. by CNB