Sailing at night question

How do you find your way at night?

Jenna question [find original question]

We have a satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation and that shows us the way even at night.
It needs electricity or batteries to run, but if it breaks down, we can navigate using the sun and the stars and a paper chart, a pencil (yeah, really!) and an instrument called a sextant which measures the angle of the sun and the stars in the sky and, with the help of a good watch, allows us to calculate where we are.
We have a magnetic compass as well and at night, we point the boat in the direction we think we need to go. If we know where we started from and our speed and direction (our velocity), we can work out where we have got to by morning. This is called Dead Reckoning and it is not as accurate as GPS but it works.
Yes, it’s generally heaps scarier at night – not sure why, but it may be the haunted house effect – just another house in daylight but comes alive at night. Also, the noise and the spray and everything seem to be magnified and I get that numb feeling that it’s all going to happen…everything tightens up and I sit (when possible – often not) and listen and fret. Different kind of scary when you cant see something too – the imagination at work.