Old Guy from Austin is Newbie

[Jackie23]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Tommy]

We were just on a "small" cruise ship (Oceania Regatta) visiting French Polynesia and Hawaii. Ship carried only 650 passengers and, at about 30,000 tons, was some 13 times more displacement than my old DDs! Loved navigating, back in the days when we still used a sextant, counted on Greenwich Mean Time and plotted our positions out with pencil on a real paper map. Now it's press one button on a GPS system and get your instant fix. All too easy, until the electronics go down. The Naval Academy doesn't even teach sextant anymore.
I entered the Foreign Service in 1966, missed Nam.

Amazing, isn't it! I was a quartermaster and also liked navigation. Good memories of shooting bearings, plotting our position, updating charts. I was also involved in the early days of SINS (ship's inertial navigation system). We had Sperry Gyro reps onboard working out the kinks. I doubt I could use a sextant these days . . . but I once could.