BLUEMOMENT

Following a thread on ToP that got out of hand (unusual that isn't it? ) I thought I might consult the generally more level headed on here for a their opinions.

In summary, some elements were trying to say that if we don't have a written passage plan we may have difficulty at the MAIB inquiry. Leaving aside that few (if any) yotties have faced Inquiries into their actions & that the MAIB tends not to be a prosecutor as it seeks to learn lessons rather than blame people. I felt that most trips are short & in well known waters & while we always check the tide & weather to figure out where would be best to go (ooh, that's a passage plan!) it is seldom if ever written down & frequently changes on the whim of the crew.

So waddya fink guys? Wanna fight?

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There's an option missing from the poll, which is 'usually but not always'

I tend to always write down or append in the log any critical tidal information for the passage and notes for any possible diversions, and this obviously includes some element of timing. The weather is also written on the log, and at the top is says 'from' and 'towards' - so yes, I think we usually have a passage plan unless we are just going out for an hour or so to catch mackerel. Dropping a mooring and sailing around for a few hours before returning to the same mooring may not require any planning. On the other hand, if it involves dropping our mooring in Balvicar bay and doing a circuit of Luing then fairly precise planning is required or it is impossible.

Sometimes more detailed, sometimes less, sometimes (but more rarely) it;s just a vague notion. Usually something is scribled in the log though.

Nick,
Would you accept option 3 as a reasonable approximation? You don't bother for the simple trips, but for (slightly) more complex ones you do? Too many options starts to dilute the poll. But thanks for the explanation.

Well on that basis I've gone for the third option but almost nothing is written down apart from the forecast (because I can't remember it) and a brief summary afterwards. I can remember the tides for a day and could as easily look them up again in the tables as in a log if I couldn't.

I carefully consider my plans and alternatives but have never felt the need to commit them to paper.

I've also gone for the third option as it's the nearest to what I actually do.

If I'm just going out for an afternoon potter from Peterhead, I don't bother with a formal plan, although I will have looked up the tide times and noted the forecast.

On longer passages, I have my own "passage plan" proforma which consists of one sheet of A4 paper where I write down all the relevant information. I keep this in a plastic pocket on the chart table, so I have all the info to hand. It's as much an exercise of using my brain to work out tides at secondary ports and so on, as it is to have all the information in one place.

I keep a library of these sheets for my usual passages, and update the variable bits each time I use them.

I suppose it all depends where I am and where I'm going. Day sails on the Clyde don't get anything other than a passing observation of which way the tide is going and a rough guess as to timings - not being in a marina sort of makes this obvious - and a guess as to the weather to compare with what the Beeb told me. Incidently, have all those weather girls sprogged yet?

I am about to head west again so I have noted the tide times for the east coast, entry times for Arbroath, etc., am keeping an eye on the GFS predictions (gusting 58 kts tomorrow in the Forth!) and will decide which way I'm going when I get to Rattray Head. Is that a "pasage plan"?

For a longer passage, or in unfamiliar waters, yes. Anyway, I suppose drawing a line on chart, checking for, and perhaps marking, obstacles like big jaggy rocks, checking likely depths, tides and tidal streams, looking for possible transits, lights and nav buoys, and having a mental picture of what's ahead constitutes some sort of passage plan.

In familiar waters I always check the chart, but not much more than that.

Shard wrote: In familiar waters I always check the chart, but not much more than that.

The advent of the plotter has made us very lazy about that . . .

Nick wrote:

Shard wrote: In familiar waters I always check the chart, but not much more than that.

The advent of the plotter has made us very lazy about that . . .

Has it though? For planning purposes I find it far easier to look at a 40 inch chart which can show a large area at a large scale, rather than fiddling about panning and ranging on a smallish screen. So when it comes to planning I'd say paper was still king and since nobody's ever going to make a small boat plotter screen the size of a paper chart that's not going to change.

Mark wrote:

Nick wrote: The advent of the plotter has made us very lazy about that . . .

Has it though? For planning purposes I find it far easier to look at a 40 inch chart which can show a large area at a large scale, rather than fiddling about panning and ranging on a smallish screen. So when it comes to planning I'd say paper was still king and since nobody's ever going to make a small boat plotter screen the size of a paper chart that's not going to change.

I like a nice big chart over view too. when you take the PC plotter out to the overview the detail disappears, when you zoom in for detail, the overview has gone. So detail on plotter overview on chart (err usually). Cos sometimes the predicted track is really usefull for steering shortest course to destination when crossing tides!

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Agreed plotter is useless for passage planning. All I said was that in familiar waters it has stopped me looking at the chart.

In Norway last year once we got 50nm N. of Bergen we ran out of paper and had to use OpenCPN on the netbook. Useless for looking ahead, we used tourist board leaflets for that.

Nick wrote:.
Useless for looking ahead, we used tourist board leaflets for that.

Was it Ronnie Faux who used an AA book north of Ardnamurchan?

Nick wrote:In Norway last year once we got 50nm N. of Bergen we ran out of paper and had to use OpenCPN on the netbook. Useless for looking ahead, we used tourist board leaflets for that.

Which is where IMHO chart plotters really can't ever be beaten by paper charts. Large scale charts of the whole world cheap, t aking up zero space and impossible to spill coffee on. And when UGC really kicks off totally up to date.

I strongly suspect people who say they always have paper chart backups are actually saying they have small scale paper charts.

Mark wrote:

Nick wrote:In Norway last year once we got 50nm N. of Bergen we ran out of paper and had to use OpenCPN on the netbook. Useless for looking ahead, we used tourist board leaflets for that.

Which is where IMHO chart plotters really can't ever be beaten by paper charts. Large scale charts of the whole world cheap, t aking up zero space and impossible to spill coffee on. And when UGC really kicks off totally up to date.

I strongly suspect people who say they always have paper chart backups are actually saying they have small scale paper charts.

Yep. I felt slightly guilty about such 'unseamanlike' behaviour at first as we sailed off the edge of our paper, but it was that or not go any further North, so we sailed nearly 400 complicated miles with no paper charts at all - and mostly it was a doddle. If the netbook had gone for a burton in Alesund it would still have been cheaper to buy a new one than buy sufficient paper charts to get us back to Bergen.

Nick wrote:Yep. I felt slightly guilty about such 'unseamanlike' behaviour at first as we sailed off the edge of our paper, but it was that or not go any further North, so we sailed nearly 400 complicated miles with no paper charts at all - and mostly it was a doddle. If the netbook had gone for a burton in Alesund it would still have been cheaper to buy a new one than buy sufficient paper charts to get us back to Bergen.

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel about it.

Unless you're a millionaire with a chart storage room in a massive boat the choice isn't paper or electronic it's Electronic, or a small subset of available paper charts, many of them small scale and out of date.