Possible gaff

[WyrmMaster]

One person's "gaff" is another person's "plot"

[cairn destop]

Don't know if you saw the Discovery Channel series about navigation.  Said use of a sextant was a lot of guessing because of the ship's roll.  Add on the inaccuracies in measuring speed and time, and it isn't so weird about Columbus getting lost.  You have to admire those old-time navigators.

[cairn destop]

If I remember correctly, a sextant can only tell you what latitude (east - west) you occupy and doesn't give you a location.  For location, you need longitude (north - south) to pinpoint your spot.  That required a clock and a constant, hence the establishment of Zulu time or Grenwich time.  (Yes, my spelling sucks sewer water, so shoot me.)  That is why navigation was such a difficult thing prior to the development of a ship's clock in the late 1800's.

[AllieFiona]

If I remember correctly, a sextant can only tell you what latitude (east - west) you occupy and doesn't give you a location.  For location, you need longitude (north - south) to pinpoint your spot.

Using a sextant for both latitude and longitude requires clocks, charts, accurate estimates of heights above sea levels, all kinds of things.  There is knowlege of all these materials, but very, very few morphs have access to it.  
Using a sextant with any precision is a bit difficult.  We'll see if Rif has the ability to do so.

[AllieFiona]

Add on the inaccuracies in measuring speed and time, and it isn't so weird about Columbus getting lost.  You have to admire those old-time navigators.

More than that... I don't think the sextant was around when Columbus sailed.  I think he used a primitive quadrant (just a piece of metal with a string attached) or even an astrolabe (it was a kind of 2-D ancestor of the sextant). Perhaps the quarterstaff or backstaff was invented by that time too (both used the basic principals upon which the sextant is based, but had no lenses or mirrors.)

So, Columbus kind-of-sort-of was able to tell how far north or south he was.  That was it.

East and West had to wait several centuries for dependable clocks.