I remember a being on a Hastings crew heading south over Biscay. The crew had, for a reason I forget, 2 engineers. The nav., had briefed the engineer to read the API when he gave him a friendly kick half way through the sun shot.
The nav gets into the dome with the sextent, and half way through the shot kicks the engineer. Alas some few mins., before the relief engineer had assumed the seat and was pissed off that he had just been kicked.
‘what did you do that for Nav?’
‘take the readings – take the readings man’
The engineer takes the fuel gauge readings and at the end passes them to the nav……
Turns out we were somewhere over the Sahara