An astronomical illiterate seeks a star to steer by — any star
Issue 67: July/Aug 2009
I’ve been a sailor all my life. One of the fundamental skills that sailors are supposed to possess is a knowledge of the stars. I am apparently the exception to that rule. For me, stars have always been little bits of light in the night sky that I futilely wish upon. This was a particular shortcoming when I began bluewater sailing because we had only celestial navigation to guide us from one place to another.
I remember taking a celestial navigation class in the 1970s. The instructor stood in front of the class pointing to a large chart of the night sky that showed all the constellations and their key stars that we were supposed to use for taking star sights. He could just as well have been pointing to the stains on the carpet for all the good his chart and explanation did me. I spent the entire four-week class trying to make a gaggle of stars look like twins, a scorpion, or a lion. The truth was I could have made anything I wanted out of those stars. Want a bunny? A seashell? A naked woman? Admittedly, the last took some doing but the class was really boring.
Instead, I sailed across the Pacific Ocean using the only objects in the heavens I could identify: the sun and the moon. And I shot the moon before dark so I never did need to identify a “navigational star.” It’s a good thing. Otherwise I would probably have missed Asia.
Elusive Big Dipper
I spent most of my night watches trying to find the Big Dipper, because if I did I could then identify the Little Dipper and the North Star: a trisect giveaway. Venus didn’t count, since it always appeared over our bow and, until full dark, it was like following a street lamp.
Night after night, my star illiteracy haunted me. On any given night, I found a hundred candidates for the Big Dipper. And later, I learned that the North Star is not actually due north. What? Did they mention that in my class? Maybe while I was conjuring up the naked lady.
Now, many years and sea miles later, my wife, Donna, and I are serenely anchored aboard our little cutter in a lovely bay in Grenada, West Indies. Above us every night is a plethora of stars. While we have a sextant aboard, we navigate these days with GPS plotters and computers. For us, the stars have become what they have always actually been for me: another pleasant after-dark diversion.
Each evening, I sit in the cockpit and look up at the stars and identify the various constellations for Donna. Since she has no idea and little interest in which stars make which constellation, and since she also has nearly blind trust in my judgment (otherwise she would never have gone offshore with me in the first place), I blithely point out various clusters of light and tell her the “name” of that constellation.
Rum and astronomy
Since I once heard that Orion’s Belt is near the equator, I always choose two or three stars in a straight line in the southern sky and tell Donna that they are Orion’s Belt. For the Big Dipper, well, that depends on how close we are to finishing our nightly single ration of rum-and-Coke. If the big jelly glasses are nearly empty, I just point to the sky and announce firmly, “There, can’t you see it?” If we are just getting started, I look at our compass, find the North Star (almost any star in the north works great for this exercise), look off at an angle and find something that looks like a bucket. And voilà! We have the Big Dipper. When she asks for the Little Dipper, I tell her it’s not visible in this hemisphere.
Naturally, Donna knows I’m making all this up. But she doesn’t spoil it because she likes the Bunny and she knows how much I look forward to finding the Naked Lady.
Michael Kilday and his wife, Donna, are currently circumnavigating the Caribbean on their 36-foot steel cutter. Michael has been sailing for 30 years in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Caribbean . . . never with much help from the stars above.
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