Navigation & Weather

Passage Planning

I really enjoy coastal navigation.  For me the two priorities are catching the tidal streams and if entering a drying harbour, catching slack high water.

I use Imray C series paper charts and the Imray Tide app.  My planning speed is 5kts.

For weather I use Windy app and XC weather.  I find they are accurate four days ahead.

Reeds and pilot books are a must, but a lot of harbours have a website which are even more up to date.

Chart plotter Raymarine eS with Navionics

Chart plotters are great…until either they don’t work or there is no data where you are sailing.

On the left is the River Humber above the bridge.  It is the most surveyed piece of water in the UK – but as the depths and the shape of the channels change so frequently Navionics do not publish them!

Luckily Associated British Ports who do daily surveys produce very accurate “pdf” charts on humber.com.

Search for “Humber” on this website and you will see the full story of navigating the 127 floating navigation marks to Goole.

Paper Passage Plan

Left is the time-line passage plan to help us work out what time we needed to depart Grimsby to Goole on one tide, 40 NM. 

The Humber drains one fifth of England, so if you are even a second late and the tide turns, you have no second chance.

Luckily we made the lock gates at Goole with 30 minutes to spare and the plan worked…. phew.

Automatic Identification System (AIS)

All commercial ships and most larger yachts now broadcast their position via AIS.

As important as you seeing where a container ship is, hopefully with AIS you will appear a a tiny dot on their screen as well as a tiny dot on the horizon.

The average cargo vessel has only one look out on the bridge, so the chances of them seeing you, even in good weather are minimal.

This screen shows how busy the straights of Dover appear. If you view the “Dover” post on this website you can see how many warships, border force and RNLI boats were in the channel dealing with  immigrants – it is staggering.

Anchor Watch

Over one night in the middle of The Wash, Good Dog swing on her anchor more than 180′.

It was one of the few times I felt the whole length of chain (scope) we had out got used.

As you can see we were constantly bounced around but I have to say I slept pretty soundly as our Rocna anchor was well bedding in and has never let us down.