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| Richard Donkin plots his course using traditional means at the RYA Day Skipper course on the Isle of Wight |
As the river Medina drains of water like an emptying bath, streaming strands of brown seaweed reveal an ebbing tide. To a sailor, tides are hugely influential: they dictate the time to set sail, the time to return, the speed and direction of a course. Not to mention the approach to a mooring and the safety of a prospective passage.
There’s a lot to learn. That’s why I’m heading away from the water and climbing the stairs to the classroom at the United Kingdom Sailing Academy on the Isle of Wight. It’s the first day of my Royal Yachting Association Day Skipper course, devoted to the theoretical side of sailing – course plotters, dividers, charts and tide almanacs. Practical comes later.
“I’ve only had my boat a little while and I’m looking forward to the day that I know enough to take it out on my own,” says fellow student Nina Bulley, a jewellery maker who sails a 21ft Corribee called Wild Goose. In the classroom we’re joined by Judy Salmon, a former university lecturer, Rob Mathieson, a property developer, and John Thompson, a health and safety consultant. All of us have some prior sailing experience but we need to build our knowledge and confidence before embarking on a sea passage in charge of a boat.
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| Taking a virtual ship’s wheel |
“When you leave you should be able to navigate like Christopher Columbus. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he was when he got there, and when he came back he didn’t know where he’d been,” he says.
For too long I have shied away from navigation. Long night passages, trying to distinguish the different lighting systems on cargo ships and trawlers, seemed bewilderingly complicated. Life on deck was more appealing than the seasickness-inducing conditions of working below on the chart table.
But to be a skipper, you need to be proficient above and below deck. We start with buoys – a relatively small part of the course, made more complicated by the existence of two buoyage systems used in different parts of the world; in all, there are 11 buoys to learn and remember, in addition to the principles behind their lighting patterns.
More complex still is the influence of magnetic variation and deviation on a boat’s compass that, together with tide and winds, influences the course you wish to set between any given points.
Charts, therefore, must be used in combination with a tidal almanac that gives the tidal variations in different places on different dates. Tide ranges are influenced by the position of sun and moon. Spring tides – those with the highest high tides and lowest low tides – are at their strongest two days after the new and full moons, while neap tides – with the narrowest ranges – occur just after the half moons in the lunar cycle.
The names almost certainly have an Anglo-Saxon derivation – springen meaning “to bulge” and nep meaning “lacking”. Then there are the super spring tides at the time of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Ride up one of those at the wrong time and your boat could be stranded for six months.
So the first calculations we must do are working out tidal heights at various times, so that we would know how far we could come in shore, for example, if seeking an anchorage.
The white bits on the chart, says Saltonstall, are showing a safe depth of water. “When you’re out there skippering, there are things to be worried about. I call them the three Rs: rocks, wrecks and reefs. These are the hazards that can damage your boat.”
Sailing theory leans heavily on the use of mnemonics. We learn that Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is Very Tasty is a good way to work out the order of calculations needed for turning a compass reading (C), subject to deviation (D) and magnetic (M) variation (V), into a true (T) bearing on the chart. I prefer this one to True Virgins Make Dull Company, suggested for the reverse calculation.
After four days learning how to set courses we’re becoming familiar with the fictitious sailing charts assembled for the training. It’s difficult to believe that there are no such places as Namley Harbour, Hiscock Sound and Farlow Channel. In and among the course-setting exercises we are tested on our knowledge of the highway code at sea. Even the best sailors can overlook this, as New Zealand yachtsman Grant Dalton discovered in 2001 when he was fined $17,000 for sailing the wrong way up the Dover Strait’s traffic separation channel.
By the time we’re kitted up for our five days at sea, a large area of low pressure with gale force winds has settled over southern England. We’re led to our yacht like press-ganged ratings – except that we all signed up for this. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
In the third part of his series, Richard Donkin sets sail
Pursuits: Everything you need to know to start sailing
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The details
Some 11,000 people all over the world complete an RYA Day Skipper course every year. Courses are run by more than 320 RYA training centres in the UK and overseas
Useful publications:
A Seaman’s Guide to the Rules of the Road (Morgans Technical Books);
International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (RYA);
Coastal Navigation: A Programmed Learning Course (Adlard Coles Nautical)
www.uksa.org
www.rya.org.uk
