€330.00 with free plotter and dividers

Pre-requisites … NONE – ideal for those with no navigation experience, or have been sailing for years but have not had any formal training.

Course is delivered by Navathome, a RYA Recognised Training Centre specialising in online training.

Day Skipper Theory Syllabus

Basics … General seamanship, including parts of the boat, tying up alongside, preparation for sea, knots and tacking.

Navigation … Using charts, depth contours, three point fix, plotting a course to steer allowing for tidal set and drift. Position fixing using by various means and estimated position taking into account tidal set and drift.

Tidal streams … Tidal streams information is required to plot courses to steer and for estimating position.
Using a tidal diamond table and the tidal stream atlas to work out the tidal set and drift for various times of day and compensating for spring and neap tides.

Passage planning … An introduction to planning short daytime passages using waypoints and visual aids.

Tidal heights … Working out the height of tide for entering ports, crossing shallows and avoiding grounding.
The lessons cover using the tidal height tables, allowing for springs and neap tides, basic secondary port calculations allowing for time differences.

Collision regulations … Basic collision regulations including collision avoidance, the correct lights to use and how to identify various types of vessel from their lights.how to recognise a vessel by its day shapes and what day shapes to use for various situations.
The course also includes lessons and quizzes on sound signals and their various uses.

Electronic navigation … Using various onboard electronic equipment such as chart plotters, depth, wind instruments and more.

Weather … Causes of weather systems, reading and taking into account present and future weather forecasts, understanding weather charts and sources of weather information.

Buoyage … How to recognise buoys by their lights characteristics, shape, colour, name and what action to take when approaching one.

Safety … Basic safety at sea including using life rafts, use of life jackets, how to handle and use flares, types of fire fighting equipment and fire prevention, how to make mayday calls, various ways of making other vessel aware that there is a mayday situation.