‘I was lost, but now am found’, I hummed to myself  following the class room training in chart work. The next step of this intensive course gives the opportunity to practice these lately-learned skills in the real world.

Under the watchful eye of the instructor, we had to play the role of skipper, in turn with our fellow students. This additional dimension adds another strand to the learning process, but the greatest difficulties I experienced were

• Moving from seascape to chart and back 
  It’s essential to know exactly where you are and then to read the dangers of the sea bottom over which the boat will pass
• Relating compass courses and bearings to direction in the real world 
  After the need to know where you are we need continue monitoring the exact place(s) which we expect to arrive at soon.

Once I have cracked these I can start calling myself a navigator; it’s as simple as that. The first step is to make a passage plan flexible enough to stand the unexpected circumstances that are certain to crop up. Getting this right does not require excessive brain power, more a dogged determination to follow a process which will assure the accracy of position and course.

Several times I have been let down by my inability to relate compass bearings (numbers in the range 0-360) to direction, so I have no inbuilt sanity check. For example when progressing from North to South I calculated a course alteration to 355º without thinking that of course this number is nearly 360 so would mean going back towards the north instead of making a small alteration from an existing southward course of 160º.

I don’t think I will make that mistake again, but there are so many pitfalls that at times this week I did begin to have self-doubts. But more of these in my next post.

Meanwhile here is a shot taken with the monster ‘boy toy’ telephoto of Kay Sira. This week I have served in Aeolus, a 37 foot Beneteau-built yacht, with our landside instructor, Simon, as skipper, so I was able catch a few pictures of Kay Sira as we passed each other in the breezy waters of the Bass Harbour roads off Kuah, the capital town of the favoured island of Lankawi.