Compass Points

"Mail buoy two points off the starboard bow!" announced the seaman apprentice. The bosun's mate who assigned the gullible newbie to watch for the non existent mail buoy was much surprised.

So, what does "two points"mean?

Compass points are a means of indicating relative direction, that is relative to a ship's heading. One does not need to know what actual compass heading the ship is taking, just the direction of an object seen by an observer. This is sometimes referred to as the relative bearing system.

The compass is divided into four cardinal directions, north, east, south and west. Each 90 degree quadrant is in turn divided into eight points, each point being 11.25 degrees apart. So, two points off the starboard bow means 22.5 degrees to the right (starboard) of the ship's heading.

Compass points are indicated on a ship's gyrocompass repeater by dots between the directional arrows.

The 32 compass points can be further divided into half points and quarter points. Cadets at maritime academies were once required to be able to box the compass, reciting names of the compass points from memory. A table of compass points and their subdivision can be found here.

Today navigation aboard ship utilizes the gyrocompass and computed GPS information. The compass heading is a digital readout. No more points.