Celestial navigation for yachtsmen

By Mary Blewitt, published by Bloomsbury at £11.99 A recent lecture to the Solent Branch of the Royal Institute for Navigation exposed the real vulnerabilities of GPS (as we’ll see in a later issue of YM).

Traditional methods of navigation are regarded as essential as back-up and, if out of sight of land, astro nav is your best bet. This slender volume of 78 pages, including index and appendices, strips the whole business down to theory, and practice. Mary Blewitt warns, ‘The reader’s real work will begin after he has absorbed this book,’ adding encouragingly: ‘Take one sight and you will be bewildered, take two and the fog begins to clear, take a dozen and you will wonder what all the fuss was about.’ Here’s hoping.