Student Stories

The Celestial Navigation course with Dave was a truly great experience.

Not only did I learn a great deal about this ancient, centuries-old tradition of finding your way across the seas, but I also experienced an incredible amount of patience, lightness, and genuine care throughout the entire process.

I found that I could understand the concepts on which Celestial Navigation is built quite easily. But when it came to putting those concepts into practice, I hit a serious bump in the road. It was challenging, and at times quite frustrating. Dave had a remarkable ability to understand exactly where I was getting stuck and then approach the problem from multiple angles until it finally clicked. His patience and ability to explain things differently allowed me to genuinely grasp what it means to use Celestial Navigation at sea, rather than simply understand it in theory.

Not long after completing the training, I crossed the Pacific from Whangārei, New Zealand, to Tahiti — a 33-day voyage without seeing another human being or even the smallest sign of human existence. During that time, Celestial Navigation became much more than a technical skill. It became an incredible grounding tool that helped me maintain perspective and sanity throughout the journey.

Many times, I found myself falling back on the wisdom Dave had shared with me during the course. There is something deeply powerful about being able to look at the sky, take your measurements, work through the process, and know that you can find your way without relying on modern technology.

I highly recommend Dave's course not only for the practical knowledge, but for the sheer experience of understanding how humans navigated the oceans before GPS, chartplotters, Garmin, and all the other modern tools we have come to depend on. It gives you a glimpse into how far humanity has come in understanding the sea and navigation.

For me, it brought a little bit of power back to the analog way of sailing. And for that, I am extremely grateful.