The scary part is if the sextant provides a different answer from what the person expects what are they going to believe. Both of us had completed years of sea time with nothing but else but a sextant ,echo sounder, a DF receiver that had been cleverly designed to receive no radio station that any young officer might like to listen to , and a dodgy radar.
At least I had it better than some of my buddies in another company where there was no radar or gyro compass and apart from the DF and echo sounder the only other electrical equipment on the bridge was the electric navigation light panel.
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