Preview: Coastal Navigation, Part 3 – Finding Latitude, Longitude, & Distance on Charts

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Jane Ahlfeld walks us through the process of finding latitude, longitude, and distance on nautical charts for when you are out on the water or planning your next adventure.

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15 Responses So Far to “Coastal Navigation, Part 3 – Finding Latitude, Longitude, & Distance on Charts

  • Adam Rhinehart says:

    Very good, thanks. Where can I find part four?

  • Andrew Blodgett says:

    This is so awesome, thanks so much! I really appreciated your slow and measured (pardon the pun) delivery, it gives the listener time to digest the information. I just completed the 3 videos with my 12 year old!

  • Keith Pullin says:

    What a wonderful coach you are, I enjoy and learn so much from your excellent talks. When can we have more ? PLEASE !!! cheers Keith. (UK)

    • Jane Ahlfeld says:

      It is personal preference. I have some of the one-hand dividers, but I seem to be handier with the brass ones I use. The feature that is most important is they keep distance measured, not loose, closing and opening too easily.

      • David Tew

        David Tew says:

        Thank you. For interest’s sake (unrelated to coastal navigation), my wife works at a local historical society and borrows/brings home things nautical she knows I’d be interested in. Over the weekend she brought me an unusual 1891 Nautical Chart No.1280, ‘Great Circle Sailing Chart Of The North Atlantic Ocean’. It has instructions and diagrams for laying out courses on the more common Mercator charts most of us use, which the Great Circle chart is definitely not. It made me wonder of there were ‘sister’ Great Circle charts for every ocean worldwide above and below the equator. I imagine so.

  • William O'Brien says:

    This is all assuming the world isn’t flat! LOL

  • Paul Forman says:

    Great series Jane! Where can I find those Eric Moody dividers?

    • Jane Ahlfeld says:

      EricaMoody.com is her website for handcrafted metal work.

  • Conbert Benneck says:

    Thanks for the great tutorial Jane. Reading about it is one thing; having you demonstrate it on an actual chart is priceless – and you can repeat it again, and again.
    A great job. Thanks

  • Kevin Tisdall says:

    very good! not completely sure I understood the division of 12 by 6 to get .2 – where does the 6 come from?

    –Kevin

    • Jane Ahlfeld says:

      There are 60 seconds in a minute of latitude or longitude.
      To convert these seconds to tenths

      .1 = 6 seconds
      .2 = 12 seconds
      .3 = 18 seconds
      .4 = 24 seconds
      .5 = 30 seconds
      .6 = 36 seconds
      .7 = 42 seconds
      .8 = 48 seconds
      .9 = 54 seconds
      1.0 = 60 seconds

      See the pattern it is the 6 times tables.
      So 12 seconds divided by 6 = .2

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