Description
The Davis Mark 15 Master Sextant is a lightweight and affordable sextant designed for astronomical navigation. The model is made of plastic and is often used for education, training and as a spare instrument on board.
A sextant is used to measure the angle between a celestial body – such as the sun, moon or a star – and the horizon. Together with nautical almanacs and tables, you can calculate your position at sea without using GPS. Although modern navigation systems are highly reliable, many sailors still choose to carry a sextant for sailing as an independent backup instrument.
The Davis Mark 15 is a full-size plastic sextant and has become a popular choice for navigators who want to learn basic sextant navigation. It does not provide the same precision as metal sextants and measurement errors can vary slightly with temperature. Therefore, it is recommended to check the instrument’s index error regularly.
Despite this, Davis plastic sextants have proved to be fully usable instruments for astro-navigation, and many sailors have completed long ocean voyages with this type of sextant. The model is well suited as a first sextant for beginners, or as a backup instrument should electronic navigation fail.
The Davis Mark 15 has a traditional Split Horizon mirror and comes with an optical telescope for observing celestial bodies. The hexagon also has solar filters and a clear degree scale for reading angles.
The sextant comes complete with 3× telescope, sight tube, plastic box for storage, instruction booklet and neck strap.
This is a practical sextant for astronomical navigation training, and an affordable option for sailors who want to learn the technique or have a simple spare instrument on board.
The navigation shop Kart.no AS carries sextants and accessories for astronomical navigation.
