Navigation: A Newcomer?s Guide: Learn how to navigate at sea

A guide to maritime navigation for beginners.

Get to grips with navigation at sea. This best-selling book gives you all the information you need to know to do just that! It starts from scratch, uses no jargon and features diagrams and pictures, instead of words, wherever possible.
It covers all modern navigation and has been updated to reflect upcoming changes in Admiralty charts. It is recommended by Fernhurst Books for beginners and Day Skipper students. Written by an RYA Yachtmaster Instructor and Examiner who runs her own RYA Training Centre which specialises in navigation, it is the perfect place for newcomers to navigation to start.
It explains simply how to look at charts (paper or digital), find your position, look at tides, plan your passage and determine the course to steer. It will help you find out where you are and how to get to where you want to.

Table of Contents

Welcome to Navigation

Looking at Charts: Types of charts, Depths & heights

Giving a Position: Latitude & longitude, Range & bearing

Finding Your Position: GNSS, A fix, A DR position

An estimated position

Looking at Tides: General introduction, Tidal tables & tidal heights, Tidal streams, Using tidal heights

Sierra on Passage

Course to Steer: The basic plot, … so much more

Pilotage: The buoyage system, The plan

Passage Planning: The regulations, The navigational plan

Looking at Electronics: The basics, Chart plotters

Sierra on Passage (continued)

Navigation … to sum up

Glossary

Sara Hopkinson is an experienced sailor, a Yachtmaster Instructor and Examiner and lives at Pin Mill in Suffolk where she runs an RYA Training Centre which specialises in navigation, radio, radar and first aid courses. She has also been a Coastguard Rescue Officer for many years and is now the Deputy Station Officer of HM Coastguard, Holbrook. She is also the author of Fernhurst Books’ VHF Afloat and Navigation: A Newcomer's Guide.