[timonoko]

I must be the last person ever who survived thanx to sextant in 1990:

I had $50 plastic sextant "Ebco". I made a program in my pocket computer (Atari Portfolio) which automatically showed your position on a map (A line perpendicular to the sun, ie with several measurements you could get a total fix). Realized however that sextant is useless if there is no horizon visible in direction of the sun. I needed "artificial horizon" but it was $1000. Too expensive. Then I saw the movie about Nansen crossing the Greenland. All he had was a bottle of mercury. He simply measured the angle between the sun and its reflection. I felt soo stupid.

Then I started paddling from Vancouver city to the west in 1990. I did not understand them tides. I did not know you can get pretabulated tables. I was paddling against tides most of the time. Somewhere between Kelsey Bay and Telegraph Cove there was 2 weeks period of fog and rain. I totally lost it. I was running out of food. I decided to turn back to Kelsey. But then the setting sun peaked out and I was able get my longitude. I was 3 kilometers from Telegraph cove. Paddling back would have been a suicide.

About 80 km between those places. But I was doing it against tides averaging less than 10 km per day.

BTW. George Vancouver was also stuck for weeks at the same stretch of Johnstone Strait. The devilish tide current appeared to be totally random and followed none of the god-given rules and laws.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timonoko/9513772987/in/album-7...