Navigation: A Newcomer's Guide: Learn how to navigate at sea

By Sara Hopkinson

Get to grips with navigation at sea. This best-selling book gives you all the information you need to know to do just that! It starts from scratch, uses no jargon and features diagrams and pictures, instead of words, wherever possible. It covers all modern navigation and has been updated to reflect upcoming changes in Admiralty charts. It is recommended by Fernhurst Books for beginners and Day Skipper students. Written by an RYA Yachtmaster Instructor and Examiner who runs her own RYA Training Centre which specialises in navigation, it is the perfect place for newcomers to navigation to start. It explains simply how to look at charts (paper or digital), find your position, look at tides, plan your passage and determine the course to steer. It will help you find out where you are and how to get to where you want to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fernhurst Books Limited
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781912621897

Sara Hopkinson

Sara Hopkinson is an experienced sailor, and a Yachtmaster Instructor and Examiner. She runs an RYA Training Centre in Suffolk which specialises in navigation, radio, radar and first aid courses. She has also been a Coastguard Rescue Officer for many years and Deputy Station Officer of HM Coastguard, Holbrook. Sara has written books for the RYA and Fernhurst Books’ Skipper’s Pocketbook, VHF Afloat and VHF Companion.

Book preview

LOOKING AT CHARTS

Types Of Chart

If you are interested in navigation at sea, start with a chart. Charts are the paper or digital maps of the sea and are full of fascinating details (not of the land or of the sea really, but of the coast and what lies beneath the water). Data has been gathered over many centuries by navigators and explorers and now satellite technology to enhance the accuracy. Look for the source data or Zone of Confidence information on a chart to see the date and reliability of the surveys used to produce it.

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Source data / Zone of Confidence information

Charts concentrate on the details that are of interest to navigators such as:

•The depth of the water

•Hazards , like rocks and sandbanks

•Conspicuous features on the coastline

•Points of navigational importance like lighthouses and buoys

Many details on the land are omitted as not relevant.

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Admiralty paper chart

The best chart to start studying is one of an area that you have sailed in or know from the land, and a paper chart is a good first choice.

Ordinary bookshops that sell maps do not generally sell charts, but most marina chandlers stock charts of the local area. Chart agents specialise in selling charts: they sell charts and navigation publications for the world.

There are a number of different types of charts.

Admiralty paper and digital charts are produced by an agency of the government, the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO), for use throughout the world. Admiralty paper charts are likely to be withdrawn after 2030. All charts, paper or digital, become out of date quite quickly as depths change or buoys are moved. After you have bought the chart, it is down to you to keep it up to date. Information can be found on the Admiralty website on www.nmwebsearch.com.

For more information on any of the UKHO products go to https://msi.admiralty.co.uk

Imray paper charts are sold through chart agents and chandlers, or direct from the Imray website, and cover the UK, North West Europe, Mediterranean and Caribbean. Their charts come as single sheets or in bound or loose leaf folios. They are printed on a water-resistant paper. In many cases a free download of the digital version is included.

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Imray chart folio

The folios contain about 10-20 charts in A2 format and cover the most popular boating areas, and updates are available on the Imray website. These are very good value and come in a strong plastic wallet and you get coverage at passage, coastal and harbour scales.

Imray also produce many pilot books and cruising guides of popular areas especially written for skippers of yachts and motor cruisers, whereas the Admiralty publications were originally intended for ship captains.

For more information and corrections, go to www.imray.com

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Single Imray chart

Digital or electronic charts are popular and can be used with a computer, tablet or a dedicated plotter with an electronic display. As well as the Admiralty, private companies produce these charts. More about these later, but remember these need updating too.

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Colne Bar: Imray electronic chart displayed on a tablet

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Foreign charts are quite similar in appearance to UK charts, and worth considering. The Dutch charts of their inland waterways, for example, are full of detail and so popular that they can be bought in chandlers in the UK.

Many of the symbols used on charts are easy to guess but others have to be learnt ... it’s best to do this a few at a time as there are hundreds!

The UKHO publishes a fantastic book: Symbols and Abbreviations used on Admiralty Charts, often called 5011. This is a useful addition to every boat’s library. The information is published for Admiralty charts, but the symbols are largely common to all chart producers. A similar guide is available for Admiralty and official digital charts.

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5011 / Symbols and Abbreviations used on Admiralty Charts, published by the UKHO

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‘Understanding a Nautical Chart’, published by Fernhurst Books, also contains all the chart symbols from 5011

Many of the chart symbols are easy to guess as they are simply very small pictures of the real object. Each picture obviously takes up much more space on the paper than the real thing so a small circle in the baseline shows the actual position. Illustration

Many people starting their first navigation course immediately consider a new pair of glasses!

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LOOKING AT CHARTS

Depths & Heights

Most charts, but not all, are now metric and instantly recognisable because they are so colourful … and say ‘DEPTHS IN METRES’ on the white margins at the top and bottom of the chart! This means that the depths of water and the heights of bridges and lighthouses are given in metres. On non-metric charts the depths are in feet and fathoms (6 feet equals 1 fathom) and the heights in feet.

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Above: A non-metric chart

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A metric chart

On comparison, the non-metric charts seem quite dull because the colours are mainly limited to black and white.

On Admiralty metric charts one of the main uses of colour is to make the different depths stand out vividly:

•Yellow is used to show the area above sea level – land!

•Green shows areas like beaches, rocks, mudflats and sandbanks which are sometimes covered by the water and sometimes not. These are known as drying areas

•Dark blue , light blue and then white show increasing depth of water

•These areas are separated by marine contour lines . Follow a contour line and somewhere along it will be written the number of metres that it represents

Don’t expect to find the shallow areas only along the coastline. The sandbanks of the Thames Estuary are famous, or infamous! The banks fan out to form a complicated maze of channels as the River Thames flows out into the North Sea. It is possible for a boat to be aground in the Thames Estuary but unable to see land at all, and in bad weather boats have been smashed to pieces on these dangerous banks. Similarly the Bramble Bank in the Solent has caught out many sailors who go aground close to the main shipping channel to Southampton Docks.

All these banks are clearly marked on the chart but skippers need to navigate with care and remember the old saying; The nearest bit of land to you is usually the bit underneath the boat!

Depth of water may be one of the most vital bits of information for navigators but it is not straightforward to show on a chart because the depth varies as the water goes up and down with the tide.

This problem is solved by relating the depths to chart datum as a theoretical level from which to start measuring.

Chart datum is usually defined as the lowest astronomical tide (astronomical since it is the positions of the sun and the moon that cause the movement of the water that we call tides). The level shown on the chart is therefore pessimistic – it shows the lowest level to which the water is expected to fall, except under extreme weather conditions or abnormal range of the tide. (The range of the tide is the amount the water has gone up or down between high water and low water.)

Range = HW – LW

In other words, there is almost always some more water than is shown on the chart – at high water there is a lot more and at low water there is a little more. Showing the least depth ever expected increases the safety margin. The numbers written over the blue and white areas of the chart are the charted depths in metres, known as soundings. They are written without the use