Word: sextant
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...crossing to Rio -- "fantastic," Janis recalls, offering further a sort of book-jacket blurb that would surely kill sales: "Nothing hairy about it!" Michel and his sextant navigated a course straight as the kerf from a sawmill blade. One day he told his family they would be in Rio at 1 the next morning. At midnight, they could see land. With scant instruction -- he had had a couple of lessons in 1976 -- Michel was now a credible yachtsman, and a diesel mechanic and carpenter to boot, what with all the breakdowns that never cease on a boat -- any boat...
...racers were equipped with a sophisticated electronics system known as Argos that prints out satellite weather information and provides the boat's precise location in latitude and longitude, relieving the mariner's ancient fear that he is lost. "They don't even need a sextant," harrumphed one old waterfront sage...
...scheduled through the 1980s. The first of the Pentagon payloads was carried aboard Columbia on its most recent mission. Though officials refused to talk about the contents, the packages included a cosmic-ray detector, ultraviolet and infra-red sensors for gauging the tracks of enemy missiles, and a space sextant that will enable satellites, or even the shuttle, to navigate without guidance from earth. During the last flight, the only references to the top-secret devices came in the form of cryptic commands to the astronauts from the Air Force Satellite Control Facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. ("Switch...
...57th day of his perilous 477-mile trek along the jagged ice fields of the Arctic Ocean, Japanese Explorer Naomi Uemura last week took a sextant sighting, then another and another. At last he was sure. With the 17 huskies who had pulled his sledge, he was at the top of the world, the first man to reach the North Pole alone by way of the frozen Arctic...
Another of the firm's innovations will add speed and accuracy to a deep-water sailor's celestial navigation. Taking sextant sights on sun, moon or stars from the pitching deck of a small craft is difficult under the best of circumstances. Most skippers turn to a crew member to note the precise time of their measurements, and such teamwork allows ample room for error. With no one to note the time for his sights, Oxy's skipper will rely on a specially designed quartz chronometer built into the handle of his sextant...