Thursday, December 13, 2012

How old is your nautical almanac?

In the last post I blogged about seeing the 2011 Nautical Almanac for sale at the local bookshop - at the end of 2012.

Then the Bursledon Blogger said he still uses his 2005 almanac and I admitted mine goes back to 2004.

But can you do better than that? So two questions:

  • How old is the oldest nautical almanac you own?
  • How old is the oldest nautical almanac you use?

6 comments:

O Docker said...

I wonder how many of us sail with no almanac at all.

Most of the time, our horizons begin and end on the same home waters (SF Bay), so the chart will do. Tides are on the GPS, and the heights give a pretty good idea of how strong currents will be.

But our most reliable tide chart is the ramp leading down to O Dock. It's like this \ at low tide and this -- at high.

Others use even more sophisticated techniques, though.

Pat said...

I have an rather old Bowditch on a bookshelf somewhere... as a bit of a collectible.

Bursledon Blogger said...

Apparently Michael Portillo will be doing a new tv series sailing the channel ports using his 1913 Bradshaw's guide!

JP said...

Might be a worth a look, though wasn't grabbed by his train travelogues.

I remember looking at the dates on some of the charts of Scotland and the soundings went back to the 19th Century in places!

I'd expect greater change for channel ports - which might actually be the point of the series.

doryman said...

I use a 1984 cruising guide, complete with charts that has served me well every year since then. It's not accurate about facilities all the time. But the charts (which are "not for navigation") never fail. It looks like it's been around the world a few times.

bowsprite said...

"Two trawlers arrived from Immingham...

The Lieutenant ... in charge of meeting incoming vessels and escort them into Mudros harbour, (exclaimed, "No Admiralty charts?) Good God man, how did you get through the Greek Islands?"

"Well, Sir, the Mate had an old bible with some quite good maps at the end."

--from Norman Wilkinson's writings of his time serving in the The Dardanelles, 1915.