Advanced Courses
Class Schedule
The next class:
This class is not presently scheduled
For more information, please contact:
Boathandling@abcpalmbeach.org
Come for the boating education…..
Stay for the friends
Boat Handling
The Boat Handling course is intended for recreational boaters who have completed a basic boating class (like America’s Boating Course) and want to gain more knowledge, skill, and confidence to boat safely and have more fun in a variety of situations.
Build boating confidence and competence for safe and fun on-the-water adventures. Boat Handling provides a foundation of knowledge and skills in boat handling and maneuvering, boat operation, skipper’s responsibilities, and boating techniques that will advance your boating enjoyment.
Boat Handling covers these topics:
· Rules of the Road: A Practical Approach
· Confidence in Docking and Undocking: Slow-Speed Maneuvering
· Boating with Confidence: Handling Your Boat Under Way
· Anchoring with Assurance: Don’t Get Carried Away
· Emergencies on Board: Preparation for Handling Common Problems
· Knots and Line Handling: The Knots You Need to Know
Each topic is presented as a stand-alone seminar. Our instructor will enrich the course with local knowledge, experience, and discussion that will help you expand your boating horizons.
Course Fee: $75 USPS members, $115 2 members sharing materials, $150 non-members.
This course continues for approximately 8 sessions.
Where: Anchorage Park Activities Building, 603 Anchorage Dr., North Palm Beach, FL
Piloting
Learn the essentials of safe coastal and inland navigation using basic GPS in conjunction with charts and other marine data. The Marine Navigation course teaches you how to use the GPS along with traditional dead reckoning techniques for planning and laying out safe routes, as well as ensuring that you are on-course while underway.
What’s Included?
· Charts and their interpretation
· Landmarks and navigation aids (buoys, daymarks, lights, etc.)
· 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 course
· Pre-planning 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
Course Fee: $125 USPS members, $185 2 members sharing materials, $250 non-members
This course usually continues for 8 sessions
Where: Anchorage Park Activities Building, 603 Anchorage Dr., North Palm Beach, FL.
Class Schedule
The next class:
This class is not presently scheduled
For more information, please contact:
MarineNav@abcpalmbeach.org
Come for the boating education…..
Stay for the friends
Class Schedule
The next class is:
This class is not presently scheduled
For more information, please contact:
AdvPiloting@abcpalmbeach.org
Come for the boating education…..
Stay for the friends
Advanced Piloting
(Advanced Marine Navigation)
This is the second in the USPS courses on navigation. It continues to build coastal and inland navigation skill, allowing the student to take on more challenging conditions—unfamiliar waters, limited visibility, and extended cruises. GPS is embraced as a primary navigation tool while adding radar, chartplotters, and other electronic navigation tools. As with Piloting (Marine Navigation), the course includes many in-class exercises, advancing the student’s skill through hands-on practice and learning.
What’s Included?
· Review of skills learned in Piloting (Marine Navigation)
· Advanced positioning techniques such as advancing a line of position
· Other electronics: radar, depth sounders, autopilots, chartplotters, laptop computer software, etc.
· Hazard avoidance techniques using electronics (e.g. “keep out” zones in GPS)
· Collision avoidance using radar and GPS.
· Working with tides: clearances, depth, effects of current
· Piloting with wind and currents
· The “Seaman’s Eye” – simple skills for checking that one is on course
Course Fee: $100 USPS members, $150 2 members sharing materials, $200 non-members
This course normally continues for 10 sessions
Where: Anchorage Park Activities Building, 603 Anchorage Dr., North Palm Beach, FL
Junior Navigation
What happens when your GPS fails? Have fun and satisfy your curiosity about boating in the days before electronics in the Junior Navigation course. Learn to use a marine sextant to take sights on celestial objects such as the sun. Even if you are not traveling long distances off shore, remember that GPS is not infallible, nor always available. Be confident when no aids to navigation or land objects are in sight.
In Junior Navigation, you will continue to use GPS as the primary position sensor as you learned in Piloting and Advanced Piloting, but with celestial navigation as your backup technique. Because terrestrial landmarks are no longer visible to the offshore navigator, you will learn to use a marine sextant and the sun as your reference point, derive a line of position, and develop a running fix. You will also learn to calculate your latitude from a noon sight on the sun.
What’s Included?
· Determining precise time
· Using the Nautical Almanac
· Taking sextant sights of the sun
· Reducing sights to establish lines of position
· Determining latitude from a noon sight
· Using special charts and plotting sheets for offshore navigation
· Setting offshore navigational routines for recreational craft
This interesting and challenging course emphasizes the practical aspects of daytime celestial navigation. You will also learn to prepare a sight folder that documents your positioning skills using sights taken on the sun.
Course Fee: $120 USPS members, $180 2 members sharing materials, $240 non-members
This course continues for approximately 12 sessions
Where: Anchorage Park Activities Building, 603 Anchorage Dr., North Palm Beach, FL.
Class Schedule
This course is scheduled
on an as-requested basis
For more information, please contact:
JuniorNav@abcpalmbeach.org
Come for the boating education…..
Stay for the friends
Class Schedule
This course is scheduled
on an as-requested basis
For more information, please contact:
Navigation@abcpalmbeach.org
Come for the boating education…..
Stay for the friends
Navigation
This course is the second part of the study of offshore navigation, following Junior Navigation. It further develops the student’s understanding of celestial navigation theory and includes positioning using other celestial bodies. You will learn to reduce sextant sights by the Law of Cosines method; later in the course you will also learn the Nautical Almanac Sight Reduction (NASR) method. Sight planning techniques are also covered. With this knowledge, you will have the tools to take sights and complete your Navigation Sight Folder. The course includes a chapter on using software-based voyage planning tool and a navigation program. This course also deals with the electronic software tools that can be used to plan and execute an offshore voyage.
What’s Included?
· A view of our solar system; how the celestial bodies appear to us on earth
· Sunrise & sunset; finding local mean time of solar and lunar phenomena and converting the time of these events to zone time
· Taking sights on the navigational celestial bodies and finding Ho, LHA, and Dec by applying corrections as required
· Sight reduction and plotting by the Law of Cosines and NASR methods to obtain an estimated position, running fix, and true fix
· Sight planning to achieve good 2– and 3– body fixes
· And more…
Course Fee: $170 USPS members, $255 2 members sharing materials, $340 non-members
This course continues for approximately 12 sessions
Where: Anchorage Park Activities Building, 603 Anchorage Dr., North Palm Beach, FL.