Uricanejack
Well-Known Member
The originater asked for practical advice. Why take pot shots about his knoladge if hes oing for exam. gongrats to those who gave posative advice
Passage Planning
- Thread starter ssjpiv
- Start date
sailorman
Well-Known Member
Uricanejack
Well-Known Member
My usual pasage planning teqnique for sailing wont be much help. I think I posted it else where stick my head out the hatch like my finger to check the wind and pick a suitable downwind estabishment to arrive at in time for tea.
That works in my home terrotary using local knowladge. kind of like walking down to the local for a pint. I know the way.
If im going some where I have never or rarely been. From an unfamilliar local.
KISS Keep it simple stupid.
Start with where are you where are you going and what you will need.
For a short costal voyage.
Make not of your vessels draft. Minum depht of water requierd for safe passage.
Chart catelouge, Charts, Tide table, Tide and curent atlas, Sailing Directions, list of lights, (List of radio signal If you want examiner to think you know your stuff)
Start with the general work towords the detail.
Look for distance table in sailing directions pick nearest listed places on table to your start and finish point and get rough distance. from this you can get aproximation of how long it will take.
Pull out the chart catelouge. mark x at starting point and y at at end point draw line between or lines as nesseary to go round land in way. pick out the No of all the charts your line goes through. now you know which charts you need.
You also can do this on a small scale chart of whole area.
You will still need the small scale chart any way. do same draw, rough lines from A to B. Step of distance using dividers. Now you have a more acurate distance.
on small scale chart use simple technices, pick easy to remember distances of like 1 mile, 0.5, mile mile 0.25
Look for hazards along rough lines. particularly near any points or nav mark you will be going around.
Look at each point or mark you will be going around identify obvious hazards and measure hazards distance off. and select easy to remember distance at least twice hazards distance off. if you can pick easy referances in this order of preferance transits, light sector, abeam, cardinal bearing, any bearing,
Plot course on small scale chart for whole route using those distances off. (this is still rough plan)
Now look up apropriate section in sailing directions.
Read for each significant point or nav mark passed. make note of any recommendations in sailing directions and hazards listed. adjust rough plan to comply with sailing directions.
Look again along all course and particularly since you will be sailing not motoring. a mile or two ither side of intended track for hazards. Mark any obvious. by highliting in pencile(not highliter)
Now you can transphere your plan to large scale charts. pick points with distance and bearing from features on both large scale charts to go between charts do not use lat and long (examiner will think you know your stuff)
Now you check again for hazards allong your intended course and make nessessary adjust ments if any. at this time look again for obvious and easy referances. ie transits ect as abouve may not have been apparent on small scale.
For sailing it is better to know where you can't go rather than a particular line. so look for transits and clearing bearings to keep you clear of identifed hazards.
Now check time and hight of tides high and low water and Dover for tide atlass.
If any area have strong curents flood or ebb check ETA and state of curent at those areas.
Check tide for bar or any restrictions for port entry channel. at departure and ETA destination.
Plot it all out on chart with notes of any hazards.
Make navigators note book ref A to B
Course and alterations hazards expected nav marks expected distance between.
Note any traffic scheems, narrow channels, port VTS, VTS channels to listen to (This is why you Pulled out radio lists)
Go over plan with crew point out all significant aspects ask for thier imput and feed back
Check weather forecast and notices to mariners prior to departure adjust as nessessary
If you do all of the abouve for examiner you should impress the hell out of him or her.
A good coastal passage plan will take you a couple of hours.
A rough one can be done takin high lights of this quite quickly especialy if its short enough to fit on one chart.
Its well worth the time to sellect alternate pub in case thewind changes
That works in my home terrotary using local knowladge. kind of like walking down to the local for a pint. I know the way.
If im going some where I have never or rarely been. From an unfamilliar local.
KISS Keep it simple stupid.
Start with where are you where are you going and what you will need.
For a short costal voyage.
Make not of your vessels draft. Minum depht of water requierd for safe passage.
Chart catelouge, Charts, Tide table, Tide and curent atlas, Sailing Directions, list of lights, (List of radio signal If you want examiner to think you know your stuff)
Start with the general work towords the detail.
Look for distance table in sailing directions pick nearest listed places on table to your start and finish point and get rough distance. from this you can get aproximation of how long it will take.
Pull out the chart catelouge. mark x at starting point and y at at end point draw line between or lines as nesseary to go round land in way. pick out the No of all the charts your line goes through. now you know which charts you need.
You also can do this on a small scale chart of whole area.
You will still need the small scale chart any way. do same draw, rough lines from A to B. Step of distance using dividers. Now you have a more acurate distance.
on small scale chart use simple technices, pick easy to remember distances of like 1 mile, 0.5, mile mile 0.25
Look for hazards along rough lines. particularly near any points or nav mark you will be going around.
Look at each point or mark you will be going around identify obvious hazards and measure hazards distance off. and select easy to remember distance at least twice hazards distance off. if you can pick easy referances in this order of preferance transits, light sector, abeam, cardinal bearing, any bearing,
Plot course on small scale chart for whole route using those distances off. (this is still rough plan)
Now look up apropriate section in sailing directions.
Read for each significant point or nav mark passed. make note of any recommendations in sailing directions and hazards listed. adjust rough plan to comply with sailing directions.
Look again along all course and particularly since you will be sailing not motoring. a mile or two ither side of intended track for hazards. Mark any obvious. by highliting in pencile(not highliter)
Now you can transphere your plan to large scale charts. pick points with distance and bearing from features on both large scale charts to go between charts do not use lat and long (examiner will think you know your stuff)
Now you check again for hazards allong your intended course and make nessessary adjust ments if any. at this time look again for obvious and easy referances. ie transits ect as abouve may not have been apparent on small scale.
For sailing it is better to know where you can't go rather than a particular line. so look for transits and clearing bearings to keep you clear of identifed hazards.
Now check time and hight of tides high and low water and Dover for tide atlass.
If any area have strong curents flood or ebb check ETA and state of curent at those areas.
Check tide for bar or any restrictions for port entry channel. at departure and ETA destination.
Plot it all out on chart with notes of any hazards.
Make navigators note book ref A to B
Course and alterations hazards expected nav marks expected distance between.
Note any traffic scheems, narrow channels, port VTS, VTS channels to listen to (This is why you Pulled out radio lists)
Go over plan with crew point out all significant aspects ask for thier imput and feed back
Check weather forecast and notices to mariners prior to departure adjust as nessessary
If you do all of the abouve for examiner you should impress the hell out of him or her.
A good coastal passage plan will take you a couple of hours.
A rough one can be done takin high lights of this quite quickly especialy if its short enough to fit on one chart.
Its well worth the time to sellect alternate pub in case thewind changes
Last edited:
If it can go wrong, it will go wrong, for any number of reasons, lightning frying all your electronics, for instance. If you have ever had any kind if formal training, one thing which will always find emphasised is that you should always use more than one source of information as a basis for any action you take while at sea. It is your life and those of your crew you could be endangering if you don't.
FishyInverness
Well-Known Member
I think you're referring to GPS signal - whereas that refers to GPS equipment.
The GPS signal isn't likely to just suddenly fail. But really, your electronics could easily fail at any time, the GPS unit could fail at any time, the cables could fail at any time, the GPS Aerial (if external), etc, etc...it's a very valid point. the GPS net will still be there, you just have a fairly fragile connection to it when you're at sea!
maby
Well-Known Member
I think I'm more nervous about the GPS network than I am about the gear on the boat. We have two dedicated plotters fitted plus a hand-held GPS with detailed marine mapping loaded. If all three of those failed, there are normally two smartphones and two tablets on board - all capable of getting us home. If push came to shove, there's an ancient Netbook with USB GPS receiver and OpenCPN loaded. That's eight independent devices all capable of navigating us home - and five of them are completely independent of the boat's electrical systems - I think we're more likely to be sunk by a tsunami than lose all our GPS navigational equipment.
sailorman
Well-Known Member
do you have a protractor & 2Bs as well
maby
Well-Known Member
Of course - and any time we are going out of sight of familiar shores, we have a course pre-plotted on the chart and track progress in the log!
But, as I said above, I would be far more concerned about a catastrophic failure of the boat's structure than about the simultaneous failure of every GPS enabled navigation device on the boat.
Roberto
Well-Known Member
+1
ended up accumulating quite a number of gps onboard, I'd consider a severe lightning strike as the only chance of losing them all
gjgm
Well-Known Member
I see. And just how often does this happen on a well maintained boat?
Why fit these electronics on your own boat when, as you tell me, they could EASILY fail at any time. I suggest you remove them. They sound damn useless.
Buy some decent gear, install it properly. It is designed for use at sea, after all.
Each to their own, but YM seems to love all this old school.
Maybe it is sail/mobo thing.. sail you have the time and boat stability to get your pencil and chart out, and ina mobo the speed/motion means mobos have moved over to elelctronics.
Dont know.. but maybe the two follow different techniques now.
A
angelsson
Guest
if doing the exam nxt week & you have to ask that question, Are you ready
For inshore planning, what I find useful is a piece of A5, lined is best, divide by 3 vertically, starting at the bottom is my departure point, and either side, port and starboard is what I expect to see as I leave, marks, buoys, headlands etc, then above those, next set of points of passage, in the centre column is the log distance to each, and from each, remembering to note log reading at start.
And so on for the whole of the passage, especially useful at night as reminder of which lights to look for from their flashing sequence.
I like to start at the bottom and finish at the top of the page which is the destination.
A
angelsson
Guest
how does that work when i an single handed
Its for the lifeboat man!
sailorman
Well-Known Member
maxi77
Well-Known Member
Theres a lot of good stuff there but little on the very basic rules
Minimum depths for each phase of the passage
Minimum distance off headlands etc, once again this may vary according to the place and phase of the passage
Key times for passage, this may be departure, arrival, and various points in the passage mainly for tidal reasons but there can be others such as firing ranges weather etc.
Other restrictions on the passage such as separation zones, etc.
Once you have this sorted you then have the rules governing the lines on the chart and can start laying out the passage.
Minimum depths for each phase of the passage
Minimum distance off headlands etc, once again this may vary according to the place and phase of the passage
Key times for passage, this may be departure, arrival, and various points in the passage mainly for tidal reasons but there can be others such as firing ranges weather etc.
Other restrictions on the passage such as separation zones, etc.
Once you have this sorted you then have the rules governing the lines on the chart and can start laying out the passage.
NormanS
Well-Known Member
It's difficult to have a precise Passage Plan, unless you know precisely where you're going. I usually have a fair idea of the general direction of where I would like to go, but I've always felt it was tempting providence to say, "We're going to xxx".
I do like to get the tide with me, if at all possible, and I will have checked the forecast, but that's about it.
I do like to get the tide with me, if at all possible, and I will have checked the forecast, but that's about it.
Poignard
Well-Known Member
That's about it for me too.
If I felt I needed to do something more elaborate then I would do it but I can't see much point in spending time producing a passage plan that I don't need just because someone I don't know thinks I ought to.
sailorman
Well-Known Member
we all do passage plans, but we may not always commit to paper.The passage could well be plotted on a chart or into a plotter.
Take the ARC, you are setting out on a 3+ week trip, one day at a time
maby
Well-Known Member
It's all "horses for courses" - if you are doing a long passage in open water, you need to make up a decent plan with tidal calculations, alternative havens and all that sort of thing. If you are nipping along the coast for a few hours, then there is no point in doing anything so formal, but you will do yourself a favour if you make a note of the times and heights of high and low tide, weather forecast and any relevant navigation warnings in the area.
Three or four weeks ago, my wife and I "popped down river" for a bite of lunch. As we were returning, it occurred to me that I had not checked the tide times - she is usually fairly pedantic about such things. Turned out that she had not bothered either - we were just "popping down river for a bite". There followed a frantic five minutes with the tidal curve and chart to work out exactly how far we were from the marina and how fast we were going - all prompted by the surprising amount of mud showing on both sides of the river. Our draft is 1.9m and there was just on 2m over the cill of the lock as we got in - one way to scrape the barnacles off! We went in very slowly... of course we weren't in any danger due to our lack of planning, but we could have had to spend several hours outside on a trot buoy if we had been ten minutes later!
oldfatgit
Well-Known Member
Having done it on a number of occasions I have derived almost ecstatic pleasure in making a thorough plan, considering all the factors which apply in accordance with my format (see earlier post), then followed it successfully. However, I have never bothered within the Solent where I just make a note of the relevant tides and the implications of the weather forecast. In truth, when circumstances are obviously favourable I have hardly done that, just checked the tides and got on with it, which probably breaks the relevant regulation. Hey ho, the risks we take.