Two-day class covering Celestial Navigation and Modern Marine Weather with Jason Christensen of Racing the Wind.
Coastal Crew Ground School
Coastal Crew Ground School is intended for people intending to crew a trip nearshore or inland. These are experiential classes based on actual experiences which are meant to teach how to perform a navigational watch safely on coastal and near-coastal routes.
These courses are intended to give intermediate and experienced sailors hands-on experience with tools and knowledge to plan coastal routes, anticipate upcoming weather events, and understand the effect of topology and currents that aren't generally covered in forecasts.
This class is focused on coastal navigation, coastal weather including currents and effects of topography, basic celestial, and nighttime navigation with instruments.
In the hands-on class each student exercises these skills in an outdoor environment monitoring weather, taking bearings and sights, planning a route using actual weather models, forecasts, and observations, note the effects of topography in order to anticipate upcoming weather and currents.
Weekend coastal ground school where students will take bearings to landmarks(daytime), identify lights and take bearings(nighttime), interpret forecasts versus observations, monitor wind direction, barometer, topology and be able to define their effects on upcoming weather, and plan and take celestial noon sights and Polaris sights.
Materials packets to students who pay deposits.
We have half a dozen sextants if you don’t have your own.
It is an awareness level class and covers most of ASA 117 (basic Cnav) and touches on the material of ASA 118 (Weather)
In addition to this class, GBA will be offering a shakedown or test sail from 9 PM to midnight on Saturday for those interested in joining future GBA deliveries or Bluewater classes. Applicants have to come with all the offshore sailing gear necessary. We will head out into Griffin Bay without the aid of GPS and weather permitting hoist the spinnaker.
