The Piloting course is the first in the sequence of USPS courses on navigation, covering the basics of coastal and inland navigation. This all-new course focuses on navigation as it is done on recreational boats today and embraces GPS as a primary navigation tool while covering enough of traditional techniques so the student will be able to find his/her way even if their GPS fails. The course includes many in-class exercises, developing the student’s skills through hands-on practice and learning. Topics covered include:

• Charts and their interpretation
• Navigation aids and how they point to safe water
• Plotting courses and determining direction and distance
• The mariner’s compass and converting between True and Magnetic
• Use of GPS – typical GPS displays and information they provide, setting up waypoints and routes, staying on a GPS route.
• Pre-planning safe courses and entering them into the GPS
• Monitoring progress and determining position by both GPS and traditional techniques such as bearings and dead reckoning
• The “Seaman’s Eye” – simple skills for checking that one is on course.

This is the first of a two-course program of Offshore Navigation for the recreational boater in which students learn about current offshore navigation electronic tools and software as well as conventional route planning techniques.  Students also learn traditional celestial navigational skills to determine position, using these techniques to check their electronics and as the backup navigation technique in the event electronics fail.

Today’s recreational boater uses electronics as the primary means of positioning, and employs celestial positioning techniques as a check that the GPS is working correctly, and as backup in the event that electronics fail. In Junior Navigation, the student will continue to use GPS as the primary position sensor, as they learned to do in Piloting and Advanced Piloting.   However, the offshore environment impacts how one uses the GPS and other electronic tools; the student will learn about some of these considerations in the course.

In the offshore environment, accurate determination of position is just as important as when one is navigating in coastal waters. While offshore, visible terrestrial landmarks are no longer available to the navigator as reference points.  In the Junior Navigation course, the student will learn to substitute celestial objects such as the sun as reference points. The course begins with the study of celestial navigation, teaching the student to take sights on the sun with a marine sextant and derive a line of position from that observation.  The sun represents but a single reference point, so the student will apply the principles of the running fix learned in Advanced Piloting, and be able to plot a running fix of one’s position from the sun sights.  Once the student has learned the basics of celestial sight reduction, the course continues with planning, positioning, and checking one’s position in the offshore environment, using both electronic and celestial tools.