How to Navigate Without Electronics
Inevitably electronic devices fail, at one time or another, on ocean passages. By looking at traditional forms of navigation, there are many simple ways and means to set your course towards a safe destination. One method, historically used in the South Pacific, was called wayfinding. It used fingers and hands, which were sometimes tattooed.
In the Disney movie Moana, traditional Polynesian means of navigation showed that course directions could be set by using a tattooed hand as well as your head. Clan leaders, often women warriors such as the Samoan leader Nafanua, had finger tattoos to assist with celestial navigation around the South Pacific islands. Celestial charts would be memorised, so that during voyages, the altitude of the Southern Cross, or other stars and constellations could be measured to determine a vessel’s latitude.
In the Disney film, the character Moana Waialiki used this technique to measure the altitude of a group of stars in Orion’s Belt. Orion was my favourite reference point constellation, when I sailed around the world, as it was generally visible overhead from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn.
Different configurations of the hand: a single finger (1°); three fingers (5°); a fist (10°); a span (25°), could be used to determine the altitude of celestial targets. Polynesian finger marks refined measurements for varying hand sizes.
North of the equator, Polaris (the North Star), could easily be used to measure latitude:
At the equator (0° latitude), it sat almost on the horizon (0°); •
At 10°N latitude, it was about 10° (a fist measure) above the horizon; •
At 20°N latitude, it was about 20° above the horizon. This is the latitude of the Hawaiian islands.
In his book Adrift – Sixty-Six Days Lost at Sea Steve Callahan used a pencil to determine mid-day altitude of the sun, and night-time altitudes of celestial bodies, instead of finger marks. He predicted that his landfall, after 66 days adrift in the North Atlantic, would be near Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. He was eventually picked up from his life raft by a fisherman off Marie Galante, just south of the main island of Guadeloupe. Not a bad navigation effort!
In South Pacific navigation, the Southern Cross has often been the preferred reference constellation. In 1993 as we sailed north from South Africa, we informally checked its position evvery night as a measurable reward for our northbound sailing efforts. The top and bottom stars of the Southern Cross are separated by 6o. If the bottom star was 6o above the horizon, the latitude would be that of Honolulu (21°N). When the bright stars Sirius and Pollux set below the horizon at the same time the latitude would be that of Tahiti (18°S).
In Australia, colonists knew little about Aboriginal celestial navigation efforts, with some researchers claiming Aboriginal people did not use it at all. However, collaboration with elders has shown that Aboriginal people used celestial navigation, and developed star maps for both ocean and land travels.
In the book Hawaiki Rising by Sam Low, a young Hawaiian Nainoa Thompson, a navigator for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, set sail in a traditional double-hulled Polynesia sailing vessel. He used the ancient star-sighting methods, as he navigated Hōkūle‘a across the 2,400 nm open ocean from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1980. He became the first-known Hawaiian in a thousand years to find distant landfall without charts or instruments.
Knowing a few constellations, a few stars, and their altitudes in the sky, makes a voyage both fun and safe. Why not give wayfinding a try?
Steering by Points
The basic points on a compass rose are split and split again into elements until a full 32 points are reached. N, S, E and W are cardinal points, NE, SE, SW and NW are half cardinal points, and the remaining 24 divisions are full points (eg N by E, NNE, NE by N etc). ‘Boxing the Compass’ is an exercise in which a seaman names all 32 points.
By Jeanne Harrison