Making a pilotage plan
With the approach time calculated we then needed a pilotage plan. This stage involves close scrutiny of the charts to identify hazards and develop an avoidance strategy. I recommended that Tracey did the exercise without the chart plotter to hone traditional skills whilst she had the support of an instructor on board.
I’m normally a firm believer that skippers should use all available means, including navigation apps and GPS – I wouldn’t want to explain to an insurer that the plotter was turned off when the boat ran aground… In training though, it’s useful to flex the muscles of traditional navigation which are often neglected in our digital age.
The buoyage up to Dandy Hole is frugal but adequate. Tracey drew the distances and bearings between marks onto the chart and wrote them into her notes. I showed her a diagram I’d made earlier which is my preferred planning technique. A sketch map gives you something to hand in the cockpit whilst your charts remain safely below, but for me it’s more the process of making the plan that’s important than how polished the product is. Reading a chart properly is time consuming, so by carefully identifying each hazard and feature in advance you’ll become familiar with the route and be able to spend more time on deck once underway. Ultimately how you make a pilotage plan is up to you, but it should include the following information:
■ Minimum under-keel clearance expected
■ Identification of hazards and the avoidance strategies you’ll use (staying within a buoyed channel, clearing bearings, transits, minimum depth, distance off etc.)
■ Details of the route with bearings, distances and important features highlighted along the way
■ Any local regulations
■ VHF channels to monitor
SCALE
The final preparation we did was to focus on scale. Scale is often overlooked in chartwork, but it’s key to understanding how things will look in real life. I asked Tracey how far off the bank we’d be once we’d dropped the hook.
The deep water anchorage at Dandy Hole is half a cable off the southern shore. Most of us couldn’t gauge half a cable by eye so we need to relate it to something closer to home: boat lengths. A nautical mile is 1853m, so a cable is 185m, call it 200m for ease. Half a cable is 100m, so 10 boat lengths in a Bavaria 32. Once we’d brought the scale home to a perceptible level, she could start to visualise what this new place would be like.