Courses for members

Advanced

Building on the basics in the Public Boating (or Boat Smart) Course, Seamanship is the recommended first Advanced Grades course for new members, both powerboaters and sailors. Students learn practical marlinespike, navigtion rules, hull design and performance, responsibilities of the skipper, boat care, emergencies and weather conditions, nautical customs, and more.

Piloting is the first of a two-part program studying inland and coastal navigation. It focuses on the fundamentals of piloting - - keeping track of a boat's movements, determining your position at any time, and laying out courses to a planned destination. Included are such subjects as: charts and their use, aids to navigation, the mariner's compass, variation and deviation of the compass, plotting and steering courses, dead reckoning, and hands-on plotting and labeling charts .

Advanced Piloting emphasizes the use of modern electronic navigation systems and other advanced techniques for finding position. Among topics covered are tides and currents and their effects on piloting, finding positions using bearings and angles, simple use of the mariner's sextant, and electronic navigation - radar, loran, GPS, etc.

Junior Navigation is the first of a two-part program of study in offshore navigation - includes basic concepts of celestial navigtion, use of the sextant to take sights of the sun, moon, planets and stars, techniques of accurate time determination, Nautical Almanac, reduction of sights, plotting sheets, and passage planning .

Navigation further develops the student's understanding of celestial theory. Introduces additional sight reduction techniques and develops greater skill in sight taking, positioning and the orderly methods of carrying on the day's work of a navigator at sea. Also, study of offshore navigation using minimal data and/or equipment, as might be encountered when on a disabled vessel or lifeboat .

Elective & Supplemental