Description
The Davis Mark 3 Sextant is a simple and affordable sextant designed for training in astronomical navigation. The model is often used on courses, in teaching and by sailors who want to learn basic navigation with a sextant.
A sextant is used to measure the angle between a celestial body – such as the sun or a star – and the horizon. Using nautical almanacs and tables, you can then calculate your position at sea without using GPS. Although modern navigation systems are highly reliable, the sextant is still a useful backup instrument on board.
Davis Mark 3 is often referred to as a “lifeboat sextant” because it is simple, robust and affordable. It was developed as a training sextant, but the model has also been used by sailors on long ocean voyages.
The sextant is full size, which means that it works in the same way as more advanced metal sextants. It is equipped with solar filters and a clear scale for reading angles, allowing the user to learn the techniques used in classic astro-navigation.
The Mark 3 has no optical magnification, which means it has no telescope. Observations are therefore made directly without optics. This makes the sextant easy to use in teaching and provides a wide field of view, but makes it more difficult to observe faint celestial bodies such as stars.
Davis Mark 3 is therefore particularly suitable for training, teaching and practicing astronomical navigation, and is often used in conjunction with textbooks and courses in sextant navigation.
This is a practical and affordable sailing sextant for those who want to learn basic astronomical navigation or have a simple spare instrument on board.
The navigation shop Kart.no AS carries sextants and accessories for astronomical navigation.
