Solo Timekeeping in Celestial Navigation

So if you are at home taking multiple sights through your artificial horizon and don't want to lose time moving from sextant to watch and reading same to catch the accurate time of the sight?

There is another way...

Get yourself a stopwatch that records splits or laps every time that you hit the split time button.

With this approach you can hold the sextant in your right hand and the stopwatch in your left. Your left will also be manipulating the index arm clamps and micrometer adjustment. Different fingers at work!

So every time a sight is taken your time is captured super quickly, without any other assistance. This of course can also be done on a boat. Maybe your crew mate and timekeeper is hanging over the side, busy doing something else?

The extract below shows you how to record the initial hack time (from your watch) and the 3 splits or intervals for each sight. It is not that important to know which time goes with which sight as they all get averaged in the end.

You have to be careful when recording the splits because if you don't hit the split button, you risk cancelling them out and will not end up with useable times. You will have to start over as I have done many a time.