Navigation Style for Day Skipper - Advice from Instructors?

[roblpm]

Hi,

I am currently doing my day skipper over 3 weekends out of Largs. Completed the first weekend which was fun and got quite a bit done. This coming weekend is the second weekend. As it is over 3 weekends I think I may have 3 different instructors!

All positive feedback from the first instructor apart from one thing that I need some advice on. What I dont understand is this:

On the theory course you learn how to plot a course to steer. However wind direction is not taken in to account.
Thus when you go on deck and instruct the helmsman to steer a particular course this course may not be possible if the wind has shifted so you may have to tack or gybe.
So what I was doing is keeping track of where we were on Navionics on my Galaxy S3 which works absolutely fine! However the feedback at the end was not to use it so much!

So my questions are:
a) How do you tell the helmsman which course to steer when you are tacking or gybing?
b) How often should I be going below to sneakily check my phone without the instructor noticing? As I find it much easier to use than the chartplotters (and before anyone tells me I shouldnt rely on it, I can assure you that when I am cruising with friends we have 2 phones with Navionics, a Nexus 7 with Navionics, a laptop with OpenCPN and raster charts and a seperate GPS and real charts!).
c) How should I impress my next instructor with my navigation skills!!!?!

Cheers,

Rob.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

a) How do you tell the helmsman which course to steer when you are tacking or gybing?
b) How often should I be going below to sneakily check my phone without the instructor noticing? As I find it much easier to use than the chartplotters (and before anyone tells me I shouldnt rely on it, I can assure you that when I am cruising with friends we have 2 phones with Navionics, a Nexus 7 with Navionics, a laptop with OpenCPN and raster charts and a seperate GPS and real charts!).
c) How should I impress my next instructor with my navigation skills!!!?!

Cheers,

Rob.

If plotting a course to counter tide and leeway then of course you just give the helmsman the calculated course. If that course can not be steered because of the wind direction then sail best course to windward or best course down wind to avoid the dead run. Its at this point that keeping a log is important. One notes the time, course steered and log reading when the helmsman settles on the best course.

From time to time you plot this as an EP from your last known position on the chart. At some point you will recalculate the best course to steer again for the next mark. If in pilotage conditions then you should have mental note of your position relation to the next waypoint and attempt to estimate when to tack or gybe with out looking at the chart/plotter.

Impress him by ignoring the plotter and GPS and working on paper. This will, I assure you, improve your appreciation of a GPS/Plotter.

Tactics for close hailed or gybing down wind

Plot two lines from the next waypoint that represent the best course to windward on port and starboard tack. Extend the lines down to where you are. Tack each time your track crosses one of the tacking lines. You can do the same for gybing but this time on the fastest (or most comfortable) point of sailing down wind.

On longer passages tack or gybe every xx miles, or sail down an imaginary corridor drawn on the chart, tacking/gybing when you hit the corridor walls. More advanced methods require shaping a course to determine the best tack to sail on - but master the basics first.

 

[nigelmercier]

Agree fully with BOB above. When I did my DS I was only allowed to look at the plotter after I had done an EP.

 

[prv]

a) How do you tell the helmsman which course to steer when you are tacking or gybing?

"Best course to windward".

Can't help with phone/plotter/etc on a course - phones didn't have GPS last time I did a course, and I think basic plotters existed on very swanky boats but I'd never seen one

Pete

 

[st599]

Best course to windward, then you make sure you aren't running into danger.

E.g. know to tack at a certain depth, or when a certain landmark is on a known bearing.

They really don't like you relying on your phone. To pass day skipper, you should be able to navigate without any form of chart plotter.

 

[Magaz97]

It is often good to instruct your helmsman to sail their best course to windward. The helm with then tell you what course he is able to steer, then you can adjust your passage plan accordingly.

 

[roblpm]

It is often good to instruct your helmsman to sail their best course to windward. The helm with then tell you what course he is able to steer, then you can adjust your passage plan accordingly.

Thanks to all so far who all agree with this. This is the bit I had been missing really I think. Not really mentioned on the theory course but I will be more confident in my instructions this weekend.

I am not sure in the RYA courses, especially dayskipper, why there is such an emphasis on non electronic navigation. The idea of dayskipper I thought is to navigate during the day which implies no overnight passages. As it is now common to have at least 4 different electronic navigation aids I can not see how relying on them is a problem! Maybe I am not old enough to see the point, I think I am the opposite of a dinosaur! I fully understand the paper navigation stuff but in practice I wont use it much! As prices keep coming down everyone will have access to gadgets that calculate Course to Steer etc. I just bought a full set of charts for OpenCPN from the nice people at Visitmyharbour for about £50.

Should I tell my staff at work to print everything out and file it? The point of our paperless office to to increase productivity! I would have though on a yacht the fact that as a skipper I dont have to keep going below to check stuff makes it safer which is surely the point!

I cant see the emphasis on paper navigation in RYA courses still being there in 50 years. So surely just a matter of how long after it is irrelavent they keep the balance as it is in the syllabus.

 

[[70521]]

Hi Rob

I did my DS some 30 years ago, but did my YM theory last year and am working up to doing the YM practical, so my answers are taken from that view.

a) How do you tell the helmsman which course to steer when you are tacking or gybing?

You don't! Finish the tack or gybe sort your self out then set the course.

b) How often should I be going below to sneakily check my phone without the instructor noticing? As I find it much easier to use than the chartplotters (and before anyone tells me I shouldnt rely on it, I can assure you that when I am cruising with friends we have 2 phones with Navionics, a Nexus 7 with Navionics, a laptop with OpenCPN and raster charts and a seperate GPS and real charts!).

You don't! Chart plotters should be switched off or ideally not even on the boat! I was crew on a YM exam boat last year and the examiner was very fair and the skipper was allowed to chack the chart as often as they felt they needed, but the frequency would be part of the overall assessment.

Personally, I'd be very, very nervous of a skipper who constantly needed the reassurance of a GPS fix every five mins. I know I am of the "old school" but knowing how to navigate using paper and compass is, in my opinion, what the RYA are teaching - navigation is not just about knowing where you are its about getting safely from point a to another point (that may not be where you were originally planning to go to). I do carry a GPS, but its main job is collecting data so I can plug it into Google Earth to see where we have been and to cross check my EPs.

c) How should I impress my next instructor with my navigation skills!!!?!

By knowing how to do the questions as asked. Taking the data, doing the caculation and presenting the answer in a clear and consise way.

By having a real feel for where you are, e.g. the last fix was XYZ we are running towards ABC at 3 knots for the last 30 mins we should be coming up to the 50m contour and that wee village to port is GHI. Its a skill that takes practice and can't be taught, but once you have the knack it is really, really useful.

Good luck with the DS.

 

[Tony Cross]

Thanks to all so far who all agree with this. This is the bit I had been missing really I think. Not really mentioned on the theory course but I will be more confident in my instructions this weekend.

I am not sure in the RYA courses, especially dayskipper, why there is such an emphasis on non electronic navigation. The idea of dayskipper I thought is to navigate during the day which implies no overnight passages. As it is now common to have at least 4 different electronic navigation aids I can not see how relying on them is a problem! Maybe I am not old enough to see the point, I think I am the opposite of a dinosaur! I fully understand the paper navigation stuff but in practice I wont use it much! As prices keep coming down everyone will have access to gadgets that calculate Course to Steer etc. I just bought a full set of charts for OpenCPN from the nice people at Visitmyharbour for about £50.

Should I tell my staff at work to print everything out and file it? The point of our paperless office to to increase productivity! I would have though on a yacht the fact that as a skipper I dont have to keep going below to check stuff makes it safer which is surely the point!

I cant see the emphasis on paper navigation in RYA courses still being there in 50 years. So surely just a matter of how long after it is irrelavent they keep the balance as it is in the syllabus.

After you (or someone you know) has been struck by lightning whilst at sea you'll appreciate this emphasis a bit more!

 

[roblpm]

Hi Rob

You don't! Chart plotters should be switched off or ideally not even on the boat! I was crew on a YM exam boat last year and the examiner was very fair and the skipper was allowed to chack the chart as often as they felt they needed, but the frequency would be part of the overall assessment.

Personally, I'd be very, very nervous of a skipper who constantly needed the reassurance of a GPS fix every five mins. I know I am of the "old school" but knowing how to navigate using paper and compass is, in my opinion, what the RYA are teaching - navigation is not just about knowing where you are its about getting safely from point a to another point (that may not be where you were originally planning to go to). I do carry a GPS, but its main job is collecting data so I can plug it into Google Earth to see where we have been and to cross check my EPs.


Good luck with the DS.

Thanks for that!!

But I would be interested what Private Pilots get taught. Is there such an emphasis on doing the nav with no electronic aids??

 

[AntarcticPilot]

The reason for NOT relying on electronics is that you have a single point of failure. OK, you've got several GPS capable devices, so you're taking sensible precautions against electrical failure on all of them at once. However, a lightning strike would probably take them all out, unless you are prescient enough to put them in the oven (which would act as a Faraday cage, and protect them). Said lightning strike (or engine failure or major electrical fault) might also kill the electrical system on the boat; no means of recharging notoriously power-hungry devices. On longer passages, electronics are relatively fragile and it is not unknown for multiple GPS systems to break down.

However, a far more likely point of failure is that there are times and places where GPS doesn't work. The armed forces deliberately jam GPS from time to time; this is notified in NOTMs. Mostly in remote places, such as the NW of Scotland, but occasionally Wales or the West Country. In fact, GPS transmissions are so weak that even a noisy bit of electrical gear COULD jam GPS locally. I'd imagine a faulty alternator might well generate enough RF rubbish to effectively jam GPS on the same vessel or nearby vessels. The radio signals from the satellites are incredibly weak.

Finally there are also natural events that would wipe out GPS; major solar storms would do that, and this mode of failure might well give misleading positions, not merely no position. There would also be little notice of an event like that; perhaps half an hour in the worst case (which is enough for aviation to be warned, but not enough for us!).

Even with multiple GPS equipment, you're still relying on something that has single points of failure. Unlikely ones, I will grant, but not impossible. So you ALWAYS need to be able to navigate without it.

The easiest way of both answering your original question and ensuring you can always stay out of trouble is to know where you must not go. So, knowing "I will be in danger if I go north of point X, or I must stay south of the line between P and Q" and similar things will allow you to give directions such as "OK, keep her as high as you can until X is on the beam (or whatever), then we'll need to tack", or "OK, we must tack now, and then keep as high as possible."

Incidentally, unless I have specified otherwise, I would expect the helm of a yacht going close-hauled to windward to be steering as high as they could, not a compass course. You can easily drop back down to leeward; you can't easily regain ground lost to leeward. Downwind is more a matter of the individual yacht and the sails set.

Navigation isn't just about knowing your position. It's about situational awareness. A paper chart is a better tool for that than a chart-plotter; it gives a better overview of the area and allows you to get the context of "where you are" much better than a plotter (with limited or even very small display area) can. The chart-plotter is far better at integrating information from many sources. But the point is that they do different things; one allows you to see the "big picture", and plan things like clearance lines and so on; the other gives you precise information about where you are, how fast and in what direction you're moving and so on. It isn't either/or, it's both. Your comparison with your paperless office isn't valid; it is true that (as long as you don't have a power-cut) you can do everything with an electronic document that you can do with a paper one (except things like signatures for legal purposes, for example). But charts and chart-plotters do different jobs. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd chose the chart over the chart-plotter; you CAN do everything a chart-plotter does on a chart (just not as quickly), but not vice-versa.

 

[roblpm]

The reason for NOT relying on electronics is that you have a single point of failure. OK, you've got several GPS capable devices, so you're taking sensible precautions against electrical failure on all of them at once. However, a lightning strike would probably take them all out, unless you are prescient enough to put them in the oven (which would act as a Faraday cage, and protect them). Said lightning strike (or engine failure or major electrical fault) might also kill the electrical system on the boat; no means of recharging notoriously power-hungry devices. On longer passages, electronics are relatively fragile and it is not unknown for multiple GPS systems to break down.

However, a far more likely point of failure is that there are times and places where GPS doesn't work. The armed forces deliberately jam GPS from time to time; this is notified in NOTMs. Mostly in remote places, such as the NW of Scotland, but occasionally Wales or the West Country. In fact, GPS transmissions are so weak that even a noisy bit of electrical gear COULD jam GPS locally. I'd imagine a faulty alternator might well generate enough RF rubbish to effectively jam GPS on the same vessel or nearby vessels. The radio signals from the satellites are incredibly weak.

Finally there are also natural events that would wipe out GPS; major solar storms would do that, and this mode of failure might well give misleading positions, not merely no position. There would also be little notice of an event like that; perhaps half an hour in the worst case (which is enough for aviation to be warned, but not enough for us!).

Even with multiple GPS equipment, you're still relying on something that has single points of failure. Unlikely ones, I will grant, but not impossible. So you ALWAYS need to be able to navigate without it.

The easiest way of both answering your original question and ensuring you can always stay out of trouble is to know where you must not go. So, knowing "I will be in danger if I go north of point X, or I must stay south of the line between P and Q" and similar things will allow you to give directions such as "OK, keep her as high as you can until X is on the beam (or whatever), then we'll need to tack", or "OK, we must tack now, and then keep as high as possible."

Incidentally, unless I have specified otherwise, I would expect the helm of a yacht going close-hauled to windward to be steering as high as they could, not a compass course. You can easily drop back down to leeward; you can't easily regain ground lost to leeward. Downwind is more a matter of the individual yacht and the sails set.

Navigation isn't just about knowing your position. It's about situational awareness. A paper chart is a better tool for that than a chart-plotter; it gives a better overview of the area and allows you to get the context of "where you are" much better than a plotter (with limited or even very small display area) can. The chart-plotter is far better at integrating information from many sources. But the point is that they do different things; one allows you to see the "big picture", and plan things like clearance lines and so on; the other gives you precise information about where you are, how fast and in what direction you're moving and so on. It isn't either/or, it's both. Your comparison with your paperless office isn't valid; it is true that (as long as you don't have a power-cut) you can do everything with an electronic document that you can do with a paper one (except things like signatures for legal purposes, for example). But charts and chart-plotters do different jobs. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd chose the chart over the chart-plotter; you CAN do everything a chart-plotter does on a chart (just not as quickly), but not vice-versa.

OK I bow to everyones knowledge!! I will be back in 50 years to check progress.

Thanks for all the advice. I will do this weekend sans electronics!!

 

[fireball]

You've already been answered about reliance on electronic Nav - so I won't add much in other than it's a case of knowing how you navigate should your preferred methods go wrong (should your office staff print everything and file it? No - but they should know how to continue to run the business should the electronics fail).

Anyway - course to steer ... before entering into big boat ownership I crewed a yacht back with a couple of yachties - one was doing his YM theory and the other already had it. We had put up the cruising chute as we had a downwind leg to the home berth - we also had 2 tidal gates to get through.
I'm experienced in dinghy racing and asymetric kites - so I was given the helm ... the YM student went down below to work out course to steer and minimum speed (below which we'd engage engine). The wind was lightish, but enough to give us >5kts depending on the angle to the wind.

After a while the instruction came up of course to steer - much further downwind than was possible without the chute loosing wind - so we replied with the lowest possible course we could do and he had to go and redo his calcs. In the end, he accepted the lowest possible course providing we didn't drop too much speed and we carried on - as the wind came round we were able to reach his intended course and iirc we did the whole trip under chute and main.

 

[prv]

But I would be interested what Private Pilots get taught. Is there such an emphasis on doing the nav with no electronic aids??

Yes there is - in fact, possibly more so from what I hear from my PPL father. Both sailing and flying have gone from "trad nav is primary, GPS is a useful aid" to "GPS is primary, trad nav is backup", but flying made the transition a lot later than sailing did.

They still concentrate on traditional nav on courses, just as sailing does, because in both cases it helps you understand what's going on even when you're using GPS.

Pete

 

[marklucas]

One thing instructors and examiners will always be looking for is situational awareness (and wind is a critical element of this for a sailing vessel) - this is most critically where am I and where don't I want to go - as stated above. You must be able to do this without an electronic aid for all the reasons stated above.

For pilotage, simply grab an A5 piece of paper and note the courses / landmarks you steer / pass and maybe sketch the entrance / creek you are entering on the other side and put it in your pocket. This means you can stay in the cockpit and skipper the boat and not be staring at the chart(plotter) all day. PM me if you want me to send you an example.

FWIW if you take either YM exam, the examiner will give you a MoB exercise and will almost certainly start this when you are down below - they want to see if you really do have this overall awareness. Blind navigation is another good test.

Good luck, enjoy. Having three different instructors might seem a drag, but you then have a wider pool of knowledge to learn from, and everyone's style is different so may suit your / other student's preferences better - I know some of my students have commented positively on this.

 

[AndyJ76]

I'm fairly young and very competent with electronics. When I did my glider pilots license and NPPL (2002 and 2004), paper was the primary means of navigation and GPS was considered a backup device. On certain qualifying flights, I carried a GPS for logging purposes but obscured it.
Many of the cheaper chart plotters will give you a direct course to steer to the waypoint, without taking into account tidal streams, so overreliance on chart plotters (beyond position fixing) can result in steering an inefficient (and potentially hazardous) course.

There are many additional electronic aids available these days; for flying there's FLARM, for boats there's AIS; but there's a good reason why the most important piece of equipment is the Mk I eyeball

 

[Sundowner 39]

PPL training is or was in 2006 all paper and calculations were all do on a wizzy wheel (type of slide rule) no electronics until you had passed your skills test.

Paper chart strapped to your knee............great fun!

 

[[70521]]

Good luck, enjoy. Having three different instructors might seem a drag, but you then have a wider pool of knowledge to learn from, and everyone's style is different so may suit your / other student's preferences better - I know some of my students have commented positively on this.

+1 a very good point.

 

[stranded]

Human foibles. It's why the professions, and teaching, are always behind the curve. Those in charge, or doing the teaching, learnt and are probably quite skilled in the 'old ways'. They then construct all sorts of excuses why you need to learn them, otherwise their superior knowledge is devalued and their self-importance dented. It's a brake on progress, but it's just human nature.

 

[Sailfree]

I did my DS in 1998 and initially though the same as you. But after navigating using GPS and chartplotter and once finding myself displayed 500m inland I now realise that Mk 1 eyeball is the most important. I have had the GPS and chartplotter fail on me a few times and last year while doing an inshore passage round Jersey in the dark/cold/raining I realised that I had become completely reliant on my GPS and chartplotter for the course changes. The choice of the inshore passage was to save time for cold and fed up SWMBO. There was no moon and it was frightening to see some very much darker shapes so near. A quick check on the chart indicated that there was rocks either side of me but I was on the right course. Safely navigated using GPS and Chartplotter but chastised myself for becoming so reliant on it. Previously I would pre-programme a hand held GPS with waypoints for all the course changes.

If its completely dark you tend to be almost completely reliant on chartplotter but try to avoid being solely reliant on it! Plan in advance lit buoys etc.

After this incident I bought a i Pad with the navionics software (not expensive). You need the 3G version (without sim) for the enhanced GPS ability. Also bought a "lifelproof" waterproof case for both ipad and iphone so that they are more resistant to being dropped and rain.

Promised myself though that in future I must navigate more with fixes and EP's and have both hand held backups out, fully charged and ready to go if night sailing in more hazzardous situations.