It's been a case of an hour here, an hour there during the working week and over several days I completed three course modules working in order from the top of the course now that I have all the materials - they were duly delivered in good time on Tuesday allowing me to get stuck in properly.
Unlike the Colregs and Weather modules I worked through at the weekend, none of the modules so far have ended with a marked test. Those marked tests are, in fact, a bit of a nuisance because I have found one key drawback of the online courses. Unless you can find an independent invigilator to monitor you whilst you take the tests and attest that you did not use any reference materials etc beyond the course pack should you ever want to go for commercial qualifications based on your Yachtmaster ticket you would have to do the theory again!
Anyway, I've deferred taking the tests so far as I want to work my way through the course and then go back and revise and reprise it again before then. The point of this costly excercise isn't to obtain a piece of paper saying I'm a Yachtmaster as quickly as possible, it's to learn as much as possible and make it stick so that I can recall the information and methods when I need it at a later date.
So the very first module on the course it titles "Latitude and Longitude". Nothing new there, I know this stuff off fairly pat so it was an excercise in refreshing the memory and checking my knowledge against the facts.
I swiftly moved on to module two which covers the magnetic compass. I took a little more care over this one as, whilst I as familiar with the material, I've never used it in anger. The cheap magnetic compass on Brigantia was, frankly, virtually useless with deviation up to 30 plus degrees and I relied entirely on the GPS for steering a course. Not best practice perhaps but adequate for our needs sailing in coastal waters.
However, there will be times now when we will be sailing in situations where it is more efficient to sail a compass course than to follow a ground track (crossing the channel, for instance, where it is faster and more efficient to sail an 'S' shaped course than it is to fight the tide to try and sail in a straight line) and Erbas has the means to do so with both a fluxgate electronic steering compass and a decent bulkhead traditional compass (although we must check both for alignment and deviation as soon as possible).
Having worked through the compass module it was on to the Position module. Now the fun started! Plotting positions on the paper chart, working out Dead Reckoning positions (DR) from course and distance logged, applying tidal set to work up an Estimated Position (EP) and from that working out the COG and SOG (Course and Speed Over the Ground) and so on.
This was quite an involved module with a lot of worked examples and "homework" and it took several sessions to work through. Good stuff though!
Next up is Tides and I fear that could get somewhat mathematical which has never been one of my strengths! ...
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