$230 / person
Learn to navigate on water and open up a world of possibilities. We’ll start with the bare basics: how tides and currents form, the effects of wind and weather on the marine environment and how to read a nautical chart. From there we’ll expand to understanding how to use and decipher the many resources available to us as kayakers when planning a trip. After we have a firm foundation we’ll gradually get more complicated as we start plotting courses and planning trips using a compass, a parallel ruler and dividers accounting for the effects of drift. We’ll cover a range of terminology, be able to find your fixed and estimated positions on the open water and most importantly impart the judgement necessary to plan a variety of trips and outings in your local waterways like an expert.
The first day of this class is classroom based on land. At the end of the first day we will create a float plan for a water based journey for day two, in which we will practically apply our learnings from the first day on water.
A sampling of the course content includes:
- Understanding the formation and effects of tides and currents
- Reading nautical charts and topographic maps
- Latitude and Longitude/UTM’s
- Difference between course, bearing and heading
- Setting a Vector Solution and planning for crossing more than/less than an hour
- Plotting courses using parallel rulers and dividers
- Using a land based compass to take a field to map/map to field bearing and triangulate
