The Book of the Sailboat: How to rig, sail and handle small boats

by A. Hyatt Verrill

This will prove very accurate for our latitudes during most of the year and the method will be clearly understood by referring to the illustrations in which the watch is shown with the hour hand pointing towards the sun at six A. M. when the figure 9 indicates south, while in the afternoon, with the hour hand pointing at the sun at four o’clock, the figure 2 indicates south.

This method of determining direction is only useful on sunny or bright days, however, and one often needs to know the points of the compass at night, when the watch would be useless.

In any spot north of the equator the North Star, or Pole Star, serves as a guide, while south of the equator the Southern Cross indicates the true south. But the Southern Cross becomes visible long before the equator is reached, in about twenty degrees north latitude, and hence there is a wide area in which both of these stellar guides serve the mariner.

Compasses

1—Pocket compass. 2—Mariner’s compass. 3—Points of compass. 4—How to use a watch as a compass. 5—How to find the North Star.

It is a very easy matter to locate the North Star by finding the constellation known as the Great Dipper or the Great Bear. Then by following in a straight line from the two outer stars of the Dipper, the upper one of which would form the lip of the Dipper, or the breast of the Bear, the North Star will be the first bright star in range of these two stars in the constellation and which are known as the Pointers.

As the Great Dipper revolves around the North Star the latter may be either above or below the Dipper, but by carrying your imaginary line through the pointers, from the foot or bottom of the constellation and beyond the top, the star may always be located if the night is clear and even if the Pole Star is not visible the Dipper itself will serve as a guide to enable you to steer a fairly straight course.

Captains of large vessels, sailing out of sight of land, determine their positions and steer their course by taking observations by means of instruments called sextants and by chronometers.

The chronometer is merely an extremely accurate clock which is set by standard time with Greenwich, and by comparing the actual time with this at noon, the mariner can work out the distance east or west of Greenwich, or in other words, obtain his longitude.