Celestial Video Courses

The completely free Reginasailing celestial navigation courses

Choose between a 3-minutes summery video, a 90 Min “fast-track-all-you-really-need-to-know” course or the full 10+ hours course covering everything celestial you need to know for your Yachtmaster Ocean Theory. Do it in self-study, just for the fun of it, or get inspired to join a 6-days Regina Laska classroom course in Malta!

The Quick-Course would be sufficient in order to use your sextant as a backup and was the general preferred method used by thousands of cruisers during pre-GPS times. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that! This so called “sun-run-sun” method is actually all you need to know in order to navigate safely by sextant and is also what your RYA Yachtmaster examiner will ask you for.

Scroll down for the individual free celestial Reginasailing courses.

What else can you do?

In Classroom Course

Rather than working through the entire course in solitude, come and join like-minded during an in-classroom course doing the entire RYA Yachtmaster Ocean Theory.

This is also the only way to obtain the necessary RYA theory certificate that you need for your RYA Yachtmaster Ocean exam. And besides, these courses cover much more than just celestial navigation and is great fun, since we’re all talking and learning ocean sailing!

See here for next course dates.

Buy the templates

The simple to use Reginasailing templates have helped hundreds of sailors to understand the individual steps for sight reduction. I started to develop them in the 1990’s so I would remember myself and they have now become available for purchase. They are great for learning and remembering, leading you step by step in a logical way through the steps of sight reduction or twilight planning (for stars and planets). They cover all celestial bodies for the RYA Yachtmaster Ocean course.

The most important templates are published by renown sextant manufacturer Cassens&Plath here and are available as printed writing pads. The Reginasailing plotting sheets you can buy from Cassens&Plath here. Don’t forget your discount code (“Reginasailing10”) if you shop anything in Cassens&Plath’s online shop. Templates can also be purchased from Toplich here.

If you are interested in the entire range of templates used in the below free celestial video course (i.e. templates for twilight determination, moon, planets, stars, compass check) including necessary sight reduction tables, you can also contact me to receive them as pdf’s for own print-outs for a contribution via Revolut or PayPal.

Practical Celestial Sailing Leg

You may wish to join a practical celestial sailing leg onboard Hallberg-Rassy 46 Regina Laska, practicing the skills of actually doing it with a sextant at sea. We use the state-of-the art Horizon Ultra Sextant by Cassens&Plath doing the sun-run-sun exercises in real.

These are also necessary to bring to your RYA Yachtmaster Ocean exam, if you thrive to take it one day.

My Templates, Tables, Almanacs etc

While watching the videos, you might get interested in obtaining all the necessary course material, including all used tables as well as Almanacs (until 2026!) and sight reduction tables for all celestial bodies.

You might especially be interested in the special templates I have developed for the sun, moon, planets and stars! These are not only helpful for understanding celestial navigation during the course, but especially as a help to remember how it worked. They are structured and guide you step-by-step how to find your position!

With the templates you are ready to go! They are extremely popular and I am happy to share them for a small contribution to my work.

How to download the templates

Send me an e-mail to get the course material as well as the templates in PDF formate.

For a small contribution I will e-mail you a link to the said material, including my newest updated versions of the shown templates. Most people send me some 50-70 EUR/USD via PayPal or Revolut or make a SWIFT-Bank transfer.

All I ask for is to please use them responsibly, i.e. not sharing freely to others or using them comericially. Once downloaded, anyone who has made a contribution may freely print them for their own sole use as often as you wish.

What others said....

"I want to express my appreciation of your wonderful Celestial Navigation videos. I have recently worked my way through them all (and revised many of them) and now I finally understand celestial navigation! Thank you so much.

I never thought my pencil eraser would be such an important piece of navigation equipment!"

Peter, Australia

What others said....

"I love so many things about this course from the structure, to the visual diagrams explaining how the angles map to the sphere, to the layered approach of posing questions that get answered in later chapters, to the exercises, to the fantastic templates with detailed footnotes and arrows that help follow the algorithm.

Thank you so much for putting such high quality educational material up for free consumption on YouTube. It's a real gem. I've got an Engineering background and felt like your teaching style and level of detail gave me a great grasp on the subject both from a theoretical and practical standpoint in a very short time."

Mario Longobardi, USA

What others said....

"I have been working through your excellent videos on You Tube in preparation for an upcoming delivery and as a refresher. By far the best and easiest to understand that I have come across and all in your unique style and ability to deliver complex information in a concise and enjoyable way, that makes sense."

Jake Adams, Crew for Halcyon Yacht Delivery

What others said....

"I have to hand it to you, your instruction is incredible!

I originally learned celestial navigation doing yacht deliveries in the late 1970s and 1980’s. I thought I’d look for a refresher on YouTube, and certainly got one while watching your videos. Your format forms appear to be particularly helpful.

I’m happy to pay for the templates!"

Peter Cullum

What others said....

"Unfortunately, I only discovered your youtube videos today as I was unlucky enough to purchase a course online.
I admit that I ve got difficulties to understand, not the way we work with all the calculations but for the reason why we are doing them. Your videos on Youtube are the reason that I am more motivated now. I wish to purchase your templates."

Despina Psoma, Grecey