Your favourite compass.

[Rappey]

Have had a few plastimo that have leaked all their fluids. Had a heath marine where the brass interior perforated and leaked.
About 5 years ago I won a beautiful sestrel binacle compass on ebay - for £7.50
Henry brown and son Ltd have a great history and would like to think their sestrel compass will last a long time.

 

[Kukri]

Have had a few plastimo that have leaked all their fluids. Had a heath marine where the brass interior perforated and leaked.
About 5 years ago I won a beautiful sestrel binacle compass on ebay - for £7.50
Henry brown and son Ltd have a great history and would like to think their sestrel compass will last a long time.

It is built to a wholly different quality standard.

 

[Refueler]

My first actual serious use of a Pelorus, not the azimuth ring that many mix it up with, was on the College yacht TECTONA ..... she has her own website now as a group are restoring her after a sad period ... seems Plymouth Maritime didn't keep her ...

Appears they have been successful and put her to good use !

Sailing Tectona | The Boat

Sailing Tectona | Tectona Gallery

I was lead Helm on her and one of the cruises was time to swing compass and check out deviations etc. Had a good day at that ...

Thread drift .... TECTONA as we were told was built on the beach in India, by an English Colonel. Story goes that he sailed her back to UK ....

When he passed away - the Widow offered it to Plymouth Maritime College for sail-training of Cadets. I was there from 1973 and she was 'our' treasure.

Tectona was also used to take us to outside the outer breakwater to do our Survival Course ... they would pump up the Raft .. throw it over ... then tell us to jump in ...
Before the exercise - strict instructions to wear our #8 working gear .. no light weight stuff and a DoT lifejacket.
Over we went - boy was that cold !!! I did it in February.
Getting into Raft - you soon learnt to suffer the push down into water and then hoist in ... otherwise you would be in the water a long time ...
Unfortunately when I did it - they forgot to give us the pump to pump up the floor. We screamed and shouted at the Lecturers but they just took it as Cadets shouting. Myself and another cadet - we both suffered onset of Hypothermia ......
The final insult was the College only recorded the Class ID and not the cadets individual names - so a few years later when Survival courses were compulsory and you had to have a Certificate - we couldn't use that event.

Wonderful memories ....

 

[Daydream believer]

I replaced my old Plastimo bulkhead with the Contest 100 ... the old one well past its useful life ... sun had destroyed the plastic 'glass' such you couldn't read it ...
I did dismantle it but it was so old - it was beyond saving.

In the cabin in its mount is a Suunto Commander Hand Held .... with the locking button. Lets put it this way - I would not buy another !!

'Camping shop' Army Marching compass ... actually VERY good ! ( 6 / 10 )

|How can you only give that 6/10??? Mine is made by Sestral & I have had it for 48 years. It is kept on my boat in the sailing season & in its teak box in the winter. It is an excellent hand bearing compass-- marks should be 10/10
But for straight forward stearing I have a sestral grid compass on board which I had for 53 years. I use it all the time but recently obtained a similar one without gimbals. as a project i made a set of gimbals for it so now I have 2 compasses

 

[Refueler]

The Marching compass is a cheap campers copy ..... but it does work. If it was an original Marching Compass - that would be a different score altogether.

 

[michael_w]

This thread is spurring me to get my grandfather's WW1 compass fettled.

 

[JumbleDuck]

It is built to a wholly different quality standard.

One of my long=deferred jobs is replacing the Plastimo Contest my boat came with with a brand new Sestrel bulkhead compass I won on eBay a few years back, The build quaility is, as you say, another world.

 

[Rappey]

Apparently sestrel stopped trading as their quality brass instruments could no longer compete with the mass produced plastic ones.