The old fashioned way is good to know. 'Lectric Machines being what they are... sooner or later the old ways come in very handy.
There were a couple of times that our Cel skills came in handy. One time down off of central/southern Mexico, couple hundred miles out... we lost our electronic fixes. The loran-c went walkabout. Satnav... nothing. We actually had to rely on morning and evening star fixes for a couple of weeks. DR in between. It was really, really cool. It was almost disappointing when the Loran finally came back up.
Another time was during Navy training in San Diego, running the "swept channel". Once you get cocky about how quick you can take fixes and run the channel, the navy trainers like to "kill" your electronics to see how long you go before you hit a "mine".
It's not "celestial" exactly, but the CG does something that the Navy does not. We set bouys, and we used horizontal sextant angles and a three-arm protractor to do it. It's the fastest and most accurate visual fix there is. We didn't need any electronics to run the channel. Our only change when they killed the radar and the other electronics was that we switched from the "dead" gyrocompass to magnetic. No worries. Our Navy trainers had heard of it, but hadn't ever seen it done before. They thought it was pretty neat. Our bridge gang score beat all the other Navy ships that year. Not that we were proud of that or anything. :-)
[/seastory mode]
And it was uphill - both directions :~)
~sip~
Very interesting, Ramius. I should come out there some day and try to get you to give me some lessons.