[_yb2s]

It is not true- the authors sound very inexperienced with celestial navigation. There are many ways including the lunar distance method to get a position at night with regular equipment. The math is more complex than a simple noon solar sighting, but it can be done with just a regular cheap plastic sextant and a watch.

It’s also no big deal to go 12 hours with no position. If you know your speed and heading you can accurately estimate your position much longer than that.

Overall, they also made it sound almost impossibly difficult for a large team of professionals, when solo and otherwise short handed recreational sailors have been reliably sailing around the world with celestial navigation for more than a century- through all possible conditions.

[danielvf]

Note that they were staying roughly 2 miles within the actual track, while having the bulk of the work being done by a combo of officers and newbs that they had just trained. That's high accuracy standards for celestial nav, not even counting that this is most of other people's first time doing this in anger.