Our 1st Celestial workshop in EUROPE!
We’re teaming up with our friends at Rutgerson Marin in Marstrand to offer a weekend of celestial navigation, hosted at the Rutgerson facility and including a private tour of the factory with Ludvig Hammarberg! Workshop hosted & taught by Andy & Mia. Max 12 people. Course will be taught in English. One hour from Gothenburg with easy flights to Europe, and the Marstrand Havshotell is right next door!
Register at the bottom of the page. Payment can be by credit card via online invoice, SWISH or SWE bank transfer after we receive your signup form.
Join Andy, Mia & our fiends in Marstrand in September for another weekend of sailing history and celestial navigation. While there is hardly an argument anymore for celestial as a backup to electronic navigation, it's part of sailing history, and as ocean sailors, we owe it to ourselves to at least have a general understanding of it, I say! Plus, it makes those long night watches that much more enjoyable when you know your place - physically and philosophically - in the universe.
Note that the course officially starts Saturday morning, but there is an optional happy hour Friday evening to chat before the class starts.
Read “Navigating by the Heavens in an Electronic Age”, by Andy.
Trans-Atlantic 2019. We shut down the GPS for a week!
Workshop Details & Schedule
This will be a hands-on workshop, taught in English, where you'll learn the concepts of celestial and do some actual sextant sights on the docks. Plus, you'll get to hang out with some like-minded people in a cool & inspiring environment at the Rutgerson factory in our Swedish sailing base at Marstrand!
Cost is 3 000 SEK (about US $350), & the Workshop is limited to the first 12 people who sign up.
Day 0 (FRIDAY - Optional):
Happy Hour at Marstrand Havshotell (on the mainland side)
Day 1 (SATURDAY):
In-depth discussion of celestial concepts & a series of 'thought exercises' to get you in the right frame of mind and learn your position spatially on the surface of the Earth.
Hands-on work with the sextant and practice taking sights.
Diving into the books and how to 'reduce' a sight.
Special private tour of the Rutgerson factory during a break with head engineer & circumnavigator Ludvig Hammarberg.
1930: Group dinner at Marstrand Havshotell (extra cost to the workshop, pay for your own meal)
Day 2 (SUNDAY):
Practice sight reduction problems based on real-world passages Andy, Mia & crew have completed.
The running fix concept.
Introduction to star sights
Expectations:
You don’t need to have any prior experience with celestial navigation to attend the workshop! In fact, you’ll become a BETTER navigator just in general after taking the workshop! Here’s a few things that will be helpful to know, but not required:
Basic latitude & longitude
How to plot positions on a paper chart, measure distances with a dividers, etc.
The concept of a ‘running fix’ using compass bearings to landmarks ashore
The 24-hour clock and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT or sometimes called UT - Universal Time)
If you really want to do some research before joining the course, here’s a list of books we recommend that relate to the art and science of celestial and navigation in general:
The Natural Navigator, by Tristan Gooley
Longitude, by Dava Sobel
Sextant, by David Barrie
We, the Navigators, by David Lewis
What to Bring:
Notebook, pencil (not pens!) & erasers
2019 Nautical Almanac (examples will be provided, but if you want to practice at home, we recommend buying your own).
Sextant (optional - we’ll have a few to use, but if you do have one, bring it!)
Packed lunch or buy lunch in Marstrand
What the workshop includes:
Copy of Hewitt Schlereth's Celestial in a Nutshell book.
Universal Plotting Sheet booklet for practice sights
Weems & Plath Star Finder to use during the weekend
Use of a sextant for practice during the weekend.
Coffee & fika throughout the day
Sign Up!
After siging up below, you will then need to pay the 3 000 SEK in order to confirm your spot in the course. Limited to the first 12 people who register. If you come with a partner or friend, please have each individual register separately.
4 SPOTS LEFT (Updated July 20, 2019)
Photos above from our last workshop in Annapolis, fall 2017.
Rutgerson Marin:
Celestial Navigation Passage on 'Isbjorn', BVI-Bermuda May 2018
Samarbete med Rutgerson Marin.
