Having a plan is key to successful, safe and enjoyable journeys, whether just a day out on the water or an extended passage.
Maritimo’s Skipper and a Master Four-qualified mariner with many years of experience across many vessels, both locally and around the globe, offered some helpful and practical tips to cut through all the clutter. Above all, planning is key to a safe and enjoyable boating experience.
“I always say that a passage plan can be as long or short as you want. You really break down each day or each part of that trip, or even waypoint to waypoint within that, to what you expect to see on that section of the journey.”
“Then it’s about putting that plan into action. That might mean putting it into the navigation system or transferring it over. If you have ActiveCaptain®, which has been a fantastic addition to the world of recreational navigating, you can run everything. You can be sitting there on your phone the night before, making a passage plan and then pushing it through to your screens, via the boat’s WiFi, so that you’re not hovering over your screen all day long, putting four thousand fingerprints on it. It’s just a nice way to do it. Then you can review it on your big screen and run through the whole voyage, put in any parameter in terms of what you want to see and what you don’t want to see, regarding depth or any obstruction – or perhaps your closest point of approach to a headland, or something like that.”
“ActiveCaptain® doesn’t have everything. It’s great on auto guidance, you can definitely see your local tides, currents, and all that information. It’s really good to have at your fingertips, especially if you’re sitting back in your helm chair and you’re running a Garmin or a Simrad system. Essentially on a smaller iPad system, where you’re operating it from the helm, so you’re not leaning over the big screen all day long.”
“When you’ve got all your pre-planning done, you can then easily be following it and referring to it on the screen. But I always really stress as much as it is great to have all these screens, we always need to keep our eyes up as well. The more gear we put on boats, the more people are putting their heads down and not looking out the glass.”
“When it comes to planning and weather PredictWind has a whole powerboat section and you can put in the parameters of your boat and it’ll tell you which is the best day to go based on weather considerations, and which day not to go. It can calculate your travel time, the most comfortable route to travel and even your fuel burn. So, the most economical day to travel.”
“Up until a few years ago the preferred method was to engage a third party that would route the weather for you. They consider your entire journey and the service might cost you say around $500, but you’ve got that backup, and plenty of captains out there still use that exact system, because it forms part of the management of the vessel, which also helps with the insurance.”
“When it comes to weather, don’t be afraid to look at the five different reports. Don’t be afraid to ring up a professional.”
“There’s a heck of a lot of electronic aids for you. But there are two things that you should never forget, which are the ‘rules of the road’ and also as I said before to ‘stick your head out the room with a view’ every now and then. So that you’re aware of your surroundings and other vessels around it. You’re watching for birds that doing different things, whether they’re attacking fish, or flying in certain directions, or you’re looking out for others on the water, like 15-year-olds in tinnies coming straight out in front of you.”
