Day 4 Second meeting at sea

Hello to Golden Lion
Each morning at 7:30 AM, we tune into a ham radio net. This is a moderated meeting by radio of all the sailboats in the vicinity including the ports of Puerto Vallarta, Paradise Marina and a few others plus any puddle jumpers. From this we learned there was another boat in our vicinity, Golden Lion from Victoria, BC. Jim and Steff and their cat are also headed to the Marquises. By calling them on our VHF marine radio and comparing positions we were able to arrange a meeting at sea. We are actually about 300 miles from land yet we could get close enough to say hello.
Some of you may be wondering how this works. Those who know about navigation can skip this part.
If you look at a globe you will notice two kinds of lines. Those that intersect the poles are called meridians (or longitudes) and there are 360 of them each one degree apart. The are numbered 1 to 180E and 1 to 180W with the starting being the meridian that goes through Greenwich, England. The date line is meridian 180.
There is a perpendicular set of parallel lines or latitudes starting with the equator and traversing 1 degree apart to the poles. Like the meridians, they are labeled by their direction so the first one North of the Equator is the latitude 01 degrees North.
Each of the degree lines are subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute is further divided in 60 seconds. One minute of latitude is equal to 1 nautical mile, which is equivalent to about 1.1 statute miles.
This system makes it possible to locate objects on the face of the Earth and also to easily determine how far apart they are. For instance if we are at 18ºN latitude and No Regrets is at 17ºN latitude and we are both at the same longitude then we are 1 degree or 60 nautical miles (nm) apart. Simple eh?
Now, how do you find out your longitude and latitude? If you are on land, you can look on a map or use the Internet to find you “long lat”. If you are at sea, it used to be a lot harder but it could be determined by measuring the angle of celestial objects like the sun, moon and stars using a sextant and marine almanac tables. Today it is much easier since the invention of GPS (global positioning system) satellites. Even an inexpensive hand-held GPS can tell your location within a few feet.
So, when we want to find the other boats, we both look at our GPS, read out our positions and through simple geometry we can determine how far apart we are and what angle we would have to travel in order to meet.