On today’s article, I’m going to explain to you what I do on my passage planning classes.
This is one of the most important classes of my last semester, since it’s a combination of several classes I had during my degree in nautical science, more specifically, bridge and deck operations.
In this class we have to do a simulation of a voyage from one port to another, chosen by our professor. Each one of us has two different voyages: one of them is coastal and the other one is oceanic.
My first passage is from Liverpool port in the UK to Leixoes port in Portugal, and I have to finish this one first to receive the next one.
My vessel:
To procced to the passage planning, we must choose a vessel. I chose the Insular from Transinsular.
Data collection:
Before we get started with the nautical chart work, we must procced to the collection of all data that might be relevant to our voyage, and to do that, we need to consult several publications.
We also need to select which nautical charts we’ll require in order to practice a safe navigation, taking in consideration the chart scale that’s more convenient to our passage plan.
Nautical publications:
Guide to port entry:
In this publication, we can find a lot of information about any port we need. It also has a scheme of the port.
The information written on this publication might be about: maximum size of the vessels, communications we must do before arrival at the port, and services the port provides.
Admiralty Sailing directions:
This book helps the sailor choose the best course possible, indicating the characteristics of the space where we navigate.
It describes all the main conspicuous points and lighthouses on the coast and has photographs to help the sailors visually identify where they are.
Ships’ Routeing:
This publication represents all the traffic separations schemes (TSS).
The TSS are like roads at sea and have the purpose of controlling the traffic direction in places where there is a lot of navigation traffic.
If that’s the case, it also indicates the hazards of that zone.
Admiralty Tide Tables:
With this tables, we can predict the height of tides, at a certain time and place of the globe.
Admiralty List of lights and fog signals:
In this book, we can find information about all the lighthouses, beacons and fog signals.
Nautical Chart work:
Before starting the chart work, I had to mark the general headings on a smaller scale chart in order to understand the course of the passage.
This was the chart I used:
After this, I collected several bigger scale charts, to work on the final course of the passage plan.
To select the charts, there’s a catalog that divides the earth into several charts, some with different scales.
On my passage plan, I used 12 different nautical charts.
Hope you enjoyed the reading! ????