On a cool, misty June morning in 2008, Frank Reed pulled into the parking lot of the Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn.   He began to unpack what he remembers as “about a hundred pounds of nautical almanacs” from his car, which he’d driven from his home in Chicago.  Reed had come to Mystic to lead a biennial conference on celestial navigation — the second such conference he had organized.  Although the conference drew only a few dozen participants, it was widely considered a great success among the small but devoted community of celestial navigation buffs that Reed captains online, including on a posting board called NavList, and at very occasional in-person meetings.

Celestial navigation — the practice of using the sun, stars, moon and planets to find your way — may seem anachronistic in an age when GPS is available not only in every boat, but also in most cars and mobile communication devices.  But the allure of celestial navigation endures for a wide variety of interests.  Many sailors, as well as orienteering buffs, survivalists, and other independent-minded types, decline to use GPS.  And using the stars for guidance holds a sense of romance that buoys and beacons can’t match.  Furthermore, celestial navigation demands a set of skills that attracts scientists, mathematicians, device enthusiasts and geeks in general.

That’s not to say that most celestial navigation buffs shun GPS.  In fact, Frank Reed has a healthy respect for the technology. “GPS is a continuous position plot.  It’s keeping track of where you are every second.  That just changes the ballgame completely,” he says.   “With a sextant you can get your position 2-3 times a day.  In between you have to do dead reckoning and know your course and speed.  In a sense, GPS solved it.”

But GPS is not invulnerable.  The global GPS system is susceptible to intentional attack, whether from military maneuvers or simply pranksters, as well as accidental interference from things like sun spots.  And GPS equipment on a boat or handheld device is vulnerable to lightning strikes, water, electrical failures and more.  Yet as Carl Herzog, a graduate student of history who spends his summers teaching aboard traditional tall ships, says: “People aren’t learning celestial because they’re worried about their GPS breaking down.  They are learning it because there’s other value to it.”

For many, celestial navigation offers a way to enhance their sailing skills.  Steve Card, owner of the New York Sailing Center and Yacht Club in New York City, plans to offer a celestial navigation class for the first time this summer to supplement the other navigation classes he already offers.  Card believes that people who sign up will be those who already sail and are intrigued by learning a new skill or are seriously interested in long ocean passages.

Herzog thinks most sailors have an innate sense of self-reliance.  “For a lot of people the idea to sail instead of just motor is because you’re creating your own solution and are making your way on your own with what nature has to offer,” he says.  “Navigation is the doing-it of discovering where you are.”

(Photo by Stan Klein)

Ken Gebhart is the founder of Celestaire, the company that sells 90 percent of the world’s sextants  — about 1,200 a year.  (A sextant is an instrument that measures the distance between celestial objects.)  Nearly half are sold to professional sailors, such as shipping lines.  “It’s just professional knowledge that people should have,” he says. “All the merchant ships have to have sextants on board.  Admittedly a lot of people don’t know how to use them, but when you’re standing watch on a merchant ship there’s not a whole lot to do but learn.”

Yet sailors are not the only celestial navigation enthusiasts.  In fact, many participants in Frank Reed’s community do not sail.  “There are plenty of people that don’t even live near the ocean.  It has a mathematical appeal and a device appeal,” he says.  “Sextants are kind of cool.  A lot of the people in the NavList community are doing this just for entertainment.  It’s a calculating hobby, something that gives geeky pleasure to people.”

For non-buffs, the discussion on Reed’s online community may be perplexing.  “With a two-body fix, we can draw a confidence ellipse again based on the standard deviation of observations as an input. It’s an ellipse about the same size as the ‘overlap box’ for the error bands around each LOP. And with a three-body fix, this answers your concern about a confidence ellipse being drawn too small when the LOPs just happen by chance to coincide in a small triangle,” wrote Reed recently, as part of an ongoing heated discussion about one method of calculation.

“The irony is that people who are attracted to it are presumed to be Luddites who don’t want computers, but nothing is farther from the truth.  They’re very skilled and just like taking everything apart and putting it back together,” says Herzog.

Teachers are also making use of celestial navigation.  Celestaire exhibited at a teachers’ conference several years ago, and were “besieged,” Gebhart says. “It integrates history, geography, mathematics and a lot of other things.”  Herzog’s students on tall ships learn to become a professional sailing crew over the course of the summer, using celestial navigation to guide their ship while they do scientific research.

In some ways, educational programs like Herzog’s do more than just teach celestial navigation — they pass it down to the next generation.  These students may be the NavList community of the future. “As a modern pursuit,” Frank Reed admits, “It attracts geeky adult men.  It tends to be a very old group.  I’m 46 and am one of the youngest members.”

And cultivating interest in celestial navigation has personal meaning for Reed and others. “We need to continue to keep it alive and relevant,” he says. “If it’s obsolete, then we’re just a bunch of eccentrics.”