Corridor of Crustaceans

We should take a moment to appreciate the 26's in the last clue - the birthday celebrations must be quite something at chez Allen.

We have the time - 23:33:34 GMT on 23 September 1987, and we need to find where Vega was directly overhead. Turns out, that is one of the simplest things you can look up in the nautical almanac. You: 1) get the Greenwich Hour Angle (GHA) for 'Aries' from the daily table for 23 Sept at 2300 = 347° 15.3'; 2) You get the Sidereal Hour Angle (SHA) and Declination for Vega from the star table for September = 80° 51.2', N 38° 46.4'; and 3) the increment correction for 'Aries' for 33:34 = 8° 24.9'.

The nifty, organizing thing here is that they massively, precisely describe 'Aries', an abstract point in space - and then they can just provide an offset for the 173 actual stars they keep track of. So it can all fit in a little book.

Add 347° 15.3' + 80° 51.2' + 8° 24.9' and you get 76° 32.3' (West, since everything is implicitly measured westerly here - the Brits seemed to be Atlantic-centric when they set this all up). With the North determination in step 2, you get the 8 digit code 38467632.

I quick marched us through the steps here - you do need to go to Dutton's for the full details. And to appreciate how complicated this gets when you try to do something practical with it. Dutton's is a wonderful book that fully embraces the Confucian appreciation for the 'Superior Man' - no patience for Taoist noodling here! 

When I put this time and place in Stellarium or Starry Night, Vega is high in the sky, but not at zenith. I think that is because we are so far from 1987, and their calculations have not been tuned for pre-internet times.

Just like when Roger first claimed he wanted the coordinates to within .1 minutes, he relents on having us interpret the leagues and North by Easts, and presents us with the map:

A cursory review of the latitude and longitude locates us at Chesapeake bay, and nowadays you can get to the NOAA charts of the area:

 https://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/12270.shtml

We can now list off the symbols:

fishie = Herring Bay

tree = Poplar Island

horned creature with cloven hooves = Goat Island

light at the point of blood = Blood Point

bell = buoy

eyes of Horus = good luck wish, these mark dangerous shoals

twin sunken islands = Long Marsh Island

bay of the east = Eastern Bay

corridor of crustaceans = Crab Alley Bay

None of the little icons exactly mark the starting point Roger wants you to click on. But Google maps nowadays can point you to 38467632, no fuss, no muss:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B046'00.0%22N+76%C2%B032'00.0%22W/@38.7665077,-76.5682235,13z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d38.7666667!4d-76.5333333?hl=en

And, we are on our way!