Navigation tips and tricks

One little trick we used to "shortcut" our navigational duties was to back sight channel marker in order to set our course. We knew the channel marker was in a direct line with the point we were headed at a bearing of 240 degrees, or about 7 o'clock with north at 12 o'clock. We couldn't see the point we were headed directly because the Earth is still round. If we looked back and the channel marker was at 60 degrees (240-180) we knew it was time to turn. What this allowed us to do was to cut a corner. Instead of sailing straight in one direction and then making a hard turn, we were able to sail more directly to where we were going.