I was recently asked by an ex student of Brittany Sailing to help deliver their new (to them) yacht. It is a very smart recently restored and re fitted Contessa 32. Unfortunately we were beaten by the weather with the arrival of "Son of the Beast From the East" The weather turned from very pleasant spring conditions to sub zero temperatures and horizontal snow! Certainly not the conditions to set out for a 48 hour + passage with a very inexperienced crew. As it turned out we probably would not have been ready to leave within the allotted time anyway as there were a lot of jobs that needed doing before we could have sailed, running new reefing lines, fitting the auto helm, replacing the anch

I have noticed that since the rise in popularity of electronic chart plotters, many experienced sailors, often despite having successfully completed the RYA Day Skipper/Yachtmaster theory course have forgotten the importance of calculating a course to steer allowing for tide. I often see people measure the course of the ground track to their destination on the plotter and take that as the course to steer, they then just constantly modify their course to keep their GPS track on the plotter track. This approach results in a much longer trip as the course is constantly changed and perhaps more importantly considerably more time at the plotter when you should be looking at what is happening a

Any one who has ventured to unknown ports, particularly in foreign parts where you can't speak the language to ask the way will know the problems of finding a supermarket for re provisioning. Over more years of voyaging than I like to think about, sailing into many ports in many countries we have honed a navigation technique that has served us well. We just head into town and as soon as we spot someone carrying a full supermarket carrier bag we walk in the opposite direction to them until we spot someone else with a full bag of shopping and do the same. People generally do not walk far carrying heavy bags so it is never long before we find the supermarket they are walking from. The

When you want to ensure you are avoiding a hazard a simple pilotage technique is the use of Clearing lines. These are bearings of a charted object such that staying on one side of the bearing line keeps you in safe water. You take bearings of the object with the hand bearing compass to ensure you are the right side of the line. Make sure you have corrected the bearing to magnetic. In the example above, the top clearing line 256 degrees (True) towards the lighthouse keeps you clear of the top red shaded shoal area. If the bearing decreases you are heading into danger and you must turn left until the bearing is again 256 degrees (True) or greater. A useful technique is to draw a quick sketch c

We are constantly being told, and rightly so, how important it is to protect the environment. To ensure rubbish and other pollutants do not get into the sea. Many of you will have watched Blue Planet 2 recently will have seen the terrible harm plastics are doing to the marine environment. It is a very important issue and some thing that has been publicised in the boating press and by the RYA. It is a pity that the same boating press and RYA do not set more of an example and find a better medium for their postal and other packaging, perhaps a good old fashioned paper envelope, rather than the plastic packaging that they currently use?

We are constantly being told, and rightly so, how important it is to protect the environment. To ensure rubbish and other pollutants do not get into the sea. Many of you will have watched Blue Planet 2 recently will have seen the terrible harm plastics are doing to the marine environment. It is a very important issue and some thing that has been publicised in the boating press and by the RYA. It is a pity that the same boating press and RYA do not set more of an example and find a better medium for their postal and other packaging, perhaps a good old fashioned paper envelope, rather than the plastic packaging that they currently use?

As someone who considers himself as a navigator I must also rank as an ignoramus as the word comes from the Latin for 'We do not know'. As soon as we get out of site of land, we do not know where we are. We have various techniques at our disposal (GPS aside) that give us a pretty good idea where we might be but we must remember that all our plots and calculations are based on predictions and measurements with varying degrees of accuracy. The speed of the tidal streams vary from one publication to another and the actual values can be varied by the weather conditions. How do you interpolate between springs and neaps, graphically, how accurate are your plots, by calculation, by eye etc. etc. Yo