If you have not quite mastered the skill of land-navigation and rely on a compass or GPS unit to guide you, you will need to have a backup plan. Hopefully, you wear a watch. This can become your land navigation tool if and when your compass or GPS fails or is lost. By using the sun and your watch, you can get a pretty good idea of which direction is which and hopefully guide you back to safety.
If you have heard of this method or have already learned it, it certainly does not hurt to refresh your memory. You never know when you may need to use this valuable skill. The following four steps will explain how to use your watch as a navigational tool.
1-Locate the sun in the sky. If there is heavy cloud cover, you can typically still determine where the sun is.
2-Rotate your body until the little hand or the hour hand is pointing at the sun.
3-Identify the line that is halfway between the little hand and the 12.
4-The invisible line is pointing south.
That is it. Once you know which way is South, all you have to do to find North is to turn directly around. Now you are facing North. Once you are facing North, East is to your right and West is left.
Just one thing, this is the way you would use the watch as a navigational tool in the northern hemisphere. If you were in the southern hemisphere, you would do the exact same steps except you would be determining which direction is North. This method is not an exact science, but it can give you a general idea. Some people get really technical and factor in daylight savings time. If you have a digital watch, you can still use it to determine direction. You will just need to use a little imagination and pretend there is a 12 on your watch and a little hand marking the hour.
Craig Caudill is a blogger/vlogger with Dan’s Depot. He instructs about emergency supplies among other survival topics both online and offline at his Nature Reliance School.
