Why Do You Need Celestial In These Days Of GPS?
	Notes provided with the compliments of Starpath School of Navigation, Seattle, WA
	See also: 'Marine Navigation' Well, the real answer is you don't. You don't even need a boat to get to Hawaii or Bermuda, or take a trip around the world. You can do this by plane. It is faster, cheaper, and more comfortable. On the other hand, if you do choose a life at sea, then one of the fundamental rules of thumb that has been tested so many times we don't even have to go over it, is you must be prepared to take care of yourself. You must be self reliant. Murphy's Law was invented on a small boat at sea. Anything electrical is vulnerable after some time in the salt air, especially when it is being jarred, bumped, banged, and dropped (i.e. going to weather). Therefore we need some dependable means of navigation, and celestial is that. Needless to say, a hand-held GPS and spare batteries stuffed into a well protected vacuum sealed bag is a pretty good back up these days, but it is not at all bullet proof. Furthermore, you are still dependent on the availability of the signals. In any sort of worldwide military conflict, it is likely you would lose these, depending on where you were; you could lose the signals in a union dispute; it doesn't really matter... or as a result of a pre-commissioning validation exercise! But quite beyond all of that (the numerical likelihood of needing it), learning celestial is still a most rewarding venture. It will make you a better navigator even on inland and coastal waters. You must, for example learn how to do a running fix to do celestial and this could well pay off if you lost the GPS for some reason and were left with just one light shining through the fog; or you close in on a coast, but can then only identify one feature on the land (which is not a radar target), etc. Such problems are easily solved with a running fix. Once you learn celestial, it is also a trivial matter to check your compass with the bearing to some celestial body, even well away from any land marks and in a strong unknown current. You can't do this with GPS, nor any other instrumentation on board, no matter what it cost, and no matter if you are a ship or a sail boat. The only way to truly check your compass at sea is with celestial. And if the boom hits your compass or lightning strikes near by, or , much more likely, you simply realize that it never was checked before, then this is something you must do one day, etc.... And finally, there is a wonderful intellectual satisfaction that comes from leaning and practicing celestial navigation. It is a way to see science and math really come together and do something both tangible and useful. Learning celestial will also make you a better mariner because whether you show it or not, you will be anxious about your navigation if you are depending on something that you cannot hope to know anything about (i.e. GPS, it is a black box. You can just hope and pray that it works right... and you will only really know that on the last day). And when you are anxious, you are more likely to make a mistake.... and you risk the chance of exposing your anxiety to the crew which could undermine your leadership, which in turn could lead to all sorts of unpleasantness... In the long run, it's best to learn celestial, even if you are never going to use it. You will know you can if you need to, and that alone will make it worthwhile. If you plan to crew on other vessels, then knowing celestial will be an important part of your credentials and will certainly help you find a good position. And one last related thought: GPS is (in an abstract sense) just a version of SatNav (the Navy Transit System... now long gone) that happens to work efficiently. In short, we have had all-weather global satellite positioning for more than 20 years now. Yet there never was any consideration at all by the USCG to remove the requirement of learning celestial from an ocean license exam. And there is none now. Whatever the reasoning behind that decision, it is many-fold increased for small boats at sea.
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