SINS. Ships Inertial Navigation System.

SINS. Ships Inertial Navigation System. On board the Simon Bolivar tied up in Rota Spain alongside the pier sometime in '75. I was on the bridge late at night. It was a moonless night and warm. Enjoying the quiet and the evening I was interrupted by our QM2(ss) carrying some funky looking device he later told me was a sextant. A clever device used to navigate the seven seas by navigators for many many years. My father told me stories of the QM on his WWII sub, the USS Apagon, being able to fix their position by catching a single star through the fog for only a couple of minutes. How true this is I can't say. But it impressed me none the less. 
I was anxious to see this curious looking device put to the test in the hands of a trained quartermaster. 
It wasn't going to be too difficult, I assumed, due to the absolutely crystal clear sky and it seemed to me every star in the universe was visible that night.
I was told by QM2 that he needed to be proficient for the E-6 test. Hmm. Any way, I watched and listened. 
As he explained the do's and don'ts, the operation and the technique I was fascinated. I asked him how he would choose a particular star out of so many possibilities. "You don't have to know all the stars, just significant points using constellations as land marks. He collected angles and various other data that slips my mind at this late date. But I asked why a nuke sub would need such a device? After all we were never to surface under all but the most dire of circumstances.
Well, he began, what if SINS goes down for some reason and we need to launch? Good question. I accepted that answer. After all that was our only mission. That and coming home, as far as I was concerned. And not necessarily in that order. How we would ball park sixteen missiles with hand held data and complete the task before the end of any nuke battle never crossed my mind.
With that he said, "I'll use the North star. It's the sailors friend", he explained as he pointed to a bright star over head. 
He wrote down some data and concluded it was time to "plot the position". Intrigued I followed him down into the control room and the attack center. 
He had the chart for our location on the console. As he began to piece together the data through some considerable calculations it became vividly clear that we were tied up some where near Seville, a significant distance from Rota. 
I watched as he pained over the results and recalculated then reploted. Then recalculated and reploted. As his embarrassment multiplied exponentially, I laughed hard. Finally, he gave up. 
Imagine being on a surface ship under way bouncing and rocking and rolling and trying to gather accurate angle related data to objects light years away in order to pin point your location with enough accuracy to derive target data half way around the planet! and launch a missile all the while expecting it to hit the expected target!!! 
Sounds hard enough doesn't it? 
Several weeks later while we were at sea I was working with another QM while standing Aux Fwd watches. He was re-writing some daily logs. "There can only be two errors per page, front and back, or the log has to be re-written. It's a legal document, so it has to be accurate."
So, what are the errors? I asked. "Spelling mostly". Who makes spelling errors and what complex words do we use at sea that could possibly confound someone that spells for a living? 
"Yes", I was told, "we have to re-write several pages a week due to inaccuracies". 
The page had several red ink circles on it. 
"It's QM2(ss), …the word? “Giesert". It was his own name. 
He couldn't even spell his own name properly even though it was sewn right on his Poopy suit!

SINS. Ships Inertial Navigation System. Truly a life saving device.