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Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by bmelton on Wednesday October 11, 2023 @08:08PM (#37851979)
AHA! Yes, thank you.

Other than the compass (which was only visible in the day time) the EPIRB was the only piece of equipment we assumed to work on the aforementioned voyage. We of course didn't test it as we were able to make it back safely, but I should probably learn more about how it functions.

Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by dylan604 on Thursday October 12, 2023 @02:30AM (#37854078)
with no propulsion, I'm assuming you were just drifting and not really doing to much navigation. just curious if you tried any celestial navigation at night to attempt any sense of direction?
Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by plugin-baby on Thursday October 12, 2023 @02:53AM (#37854215)
if there was wind they may have been sailing.
Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by bmelton on Thursday October 12, 2023 @05:41PM (#37863526)
It was an old race boat, we had ample wind, and the owner casually bragged that he'd replaced the sails with ones that were "about 30% too big for the boat."

We were sailing like demons. One of my biggest regrets of the trip was that we didn't have any wind or speed instrumentation to let us know how fast we were going, but it felt extremely fast.

Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by bmelton on Thursday October 12, 2023 @05:38PM (#37863501)
Yeah. We mostly just picked out a set of stars and kept them roughly to position. Every so often we'd try to illuminate the fixed compass with a phone to ensure that we hadn't wildly drifted from our expected bearing (also, stars move over the course of the night and I have no idea how much)
Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by nullfield on Thursday October 12, 2023 @02:55PM (#37861438)
I’m surprised that things like US military-style tritium-illuminated compasses aren’t more popular or widely used for cases like this.

They’re very safe, last something like 10 years, and aren’t really expensive (compared to “I need to know what direction I’m going and have no way to do so, or can’t see it”).

Re:Starlink Direct to Cell by bmelton on Thursday October 12, 2023 @05:36PM (#37863480)
It would have been a delightful addition and honestly would have kept us much safer. It was fairly easy to keep Orion's belt just port of the mast, but occasionally cloud cover or weather would make that more difficult.