Astra 3B Marine Sextant with Sextant Handbook Included

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You are bidding on a used Astra IIIB marine sextant. It is in excellent condition. My wife and I used it on our 34' sailboat over two years sailing from California to the Carribean via the Galapagos, Easter Island, Patagonia, Chile and the Panama Canal. I found it to be reliable and accurate. The wood box has some scratches from storage on a sailboat but the sextant has always been kept in the box and is accurate and in execellent undamaged condition. The LED lighting of arc and drum are functional. The oil, adjusting wrench, and instructions, are all in the varnished wooden case. The Astra IIIB sextant incorporates all of the features of high-end German and Japanese sextants, at about one third of their cost. It is a very accurate instrument of very high quality. How does Astra do it? First of all, it's made in China, w labor rates are vastly lower than in Germany or Japan. Second, they use an aluminum alloy for the frame (as does Freiberger and C. Plath in its lightweight sextants). As a result, t is a very minor sacrifice in potential accuracy (+ or - 20 seconds throughout the arc, compared with 9 seconds for the Cassens & Plath), which is likely to be completely inconsequential when taking sights from a moving small yacht. The Astra IIIB is used by many professional navigators. The Astra features a rectangular index mirror, read more

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