How a Marine Sextant Helps in Getting Ship Position ?

In the age of Google maps, GPS and AIS, there is something in the wheelhouse that looks so outdated. I am talking about sextant and getting the position of the ship by sextant. Now before you yawn and find some more sexy navigation topic to jam on, hear me out. Sextant has something unique that all the advanced technologies cannot match. It can give you your accurate position without relying on any electronic aid or satellite. That is the reason sextant has been there and as far as we can tell, it always will be. But there is also a drawback. To get a position from the sextant requires some calculations and expertise in handling the sextant. Also, the position is not instant read out like in modern equipments. But more you use the sextant, more these drawbacks are marginalized. Now you may know all the calculations of the sextant. You may know about long by chron, Mer-pass and all other calculations to get the ship's position. But if you don't know how the hell an equipment like sextant can get us our position, you are missing everything. And anyone who wants to learn just that, they need to start with something very basic. Position lines. Position Lines I am going to assume that you know nothing about "position lines". That is totally OK. I will spell it out for you. A position line is a line on which lies a point where ...