Tracy is, for her sins, married to me and has been since 1991. For some reason she's prepared to put up with me, two children and two cats (we used to have only three, but Albert died of old age - look at his memorial page - and we ended up with two replacements for him, one of which died of kidney failure within 5 months). Tracy has just finished a degree with the Open University, something that was aided by her work in the Library at one of the University of Greenwich sites.

We live in Sittingbourne in North Kent, England. [Where?!? I hear you ask.. I didn't even know it existed myself until I moved here in 1987 when I got my first job. Think of London, and Canterbury. We're halfway between.]

Why do I want to make a sextant?

Well, not just a sextant actually. A sextant's just one part of a much bigger picture.

In 1987 I took an atlas, closed my eyes, and stuck a pin in it and said 'I'm going there'.

The Antarctic Peninsular.
Just east of Deception Island.

The problem was how to get there. Not easy by car, train or commercial flight. No tourist cruises go there either. So, it's got to be by yacht. A steel yacht.

Now, engineers in the UK are poorly paid by international standards, so how to afford a yacht on less than the national average wage? Obvious: make it myself.

To build a steel yacht, I needed a welder and a cheap way of obtaining machined parts. For the machined parts I bought a combined lathe/mill and, over two years, taught myself how to use it (with quite a lot of advice I may add!). The aluminium deck fittings need to be cast, so I made my own furnace and taught myself how to do casting.

I need instruments for the boat. Preferably ones that can be repaired on board in the middle of an ocean. I'm not a wiz at electronics (being a mechanical engineer), so I need some mechanical instruments that can't be fried by lightning. A sextant is one, and a good sextant costs a fortune. I looked all over the net for a home build one, and only came up with Omar Reis' design. It wasn't quite what I wanted, so I designed my own.

The sextant is the first (and most complicated) of the instruments I'm going to make for my yacht. Others include a depth sounder (cast lead lump on a rope - yes, real high tech!), an angle of heel meter, and various compasses for inside/outside use. I've already designed a small plywood sailing tender, but haven't got the drawings in a state where they can be published.

And when does this trip start? On or before December 14, 2019 (my fifty-fifth birthday). Gives me plenty of time to learn to sail properly!

My Experience

My engineering experience has been a pretty normal one for a professional engineer in the UK. At university I had virtually nothing to do with machine tools, and had all my experience confined to looking longingly at CNC machines operated by trained technicians. [It is a commonly held belief in Universities that all students are incompetent & therefore shouldn't be allowed to touch anything, not even the floors. Academic life would be much less cluttered without students, then there would be more time to persue important things - like research. Having to lecture grubby students is a real inconvenience for an exalted person like a Professor.] After graduating, I have had 15 years of office engineering, concentrating on stress analysis of containers and aircraft interiors. Then, in 2000 I got a promotion of a sort. I had to continue with existing stress work and add project management to it. The task of whirling around organising things left, right and centre does not sit well with the precision required of a stress engineer, but I get the job done.

In 2001 I bought my lathe, a Warco WMT300 and have had considerable fun with it since. I reckon my engineering design ability has been considerably enhanced by the experience. Now I have the certain authority to tell a designer and/or machinist to do something, as I can now do it myself at home. This has put a stop to the usual sharp intake of breath and 'You can't do that' which often confronts an office engineer!

I have always been interested in programming, starting in 1982 with a Sinclair Spectrum (Timex 2000 in the US). Then I eventually graduated to windows and C++ (all self taught), and have had a bit of fun writing programs to help me in my work and play. I have put a small sample on the downloads page. Marv Klotz has been kind enough to publish two programs of mine on his Software for Machinists. web page. The two programs he's published are on the downloads page too.

Other interests include an abiding interest in 3D modelling and 3D artwork. I am more entusiastic than competent, though I can produce a few pictures (as may be seen at the 'richardandtracy' gallery page at Renderosity, you may have to register for free to see it). This is good, harmless fun which whiles away a few hours. I started with 'Poser 3', upgraded to 'Poser 4', then got fed up with the continual bugridden upgrade of software for money. I stuck with 'Poser 4' for a while then saw 'DAZ Studio'. This is a slightly buggy program, but it's free, so I don't care about the bugs! What is more, the renderer is more capable than 'Poser 4's good renderer while remaining 100% compatible with the existing 'Poser 4' models I've got. It was just too good to resist.