Talk: Southwest Passage Planning (29 Nov 2024)
Published 16:43 on 30 Nov 2024
by Robert Bailey.
Our final talk of 2024, attended by HYC and Hornet members, began well; a short history of the speaker Robert Bailey, followed by WHY he wrote the book, HOW he wrote the book and finally a Q&A where some of the discussion became rather lively. The hidden agenda of the book is really to challenge our thinking of the future of passage planning and some people were NOT HAPPY.
Robert was born in Portsmouth and as a young boy joined the sea scouts based in Portsmouth Harbour, following in the footsteps of his elder brother, where he learned sailing and seamanship. With his parents he sailed during every holiday, and whenever they had the chance in between, giving him a sound knowledge of the coastline between Portsmouth and the Isles of Scilly. Eventually he qualified as a Yachtmaster Instructor.
He went on to explain why he wrote the book. The modern way of passage planning is moving towards small screens as Admiralty paper charts are to be discontinued some time after 2030. Imray will stop producing and supporting charts by the end of 2025. Digital charts are easier to keep up to date, always present in the cockpit and more wear resistant. They are cheaper than buying paper charts if you need to cover a large area. Charted positions and COG are more accurate but digital planning does not take into account the 'What ifs' that can go wrong, weather conditions, crew sickness or boat problems. You can't put Plan B onto a chartplotter. If we rely on technology to do our planning we don't necessarily understand what is happening. Why has the chart plotter chosen a particular route and can we blindly just follow it? Will passage planning skills be lost?
In addition to charts we use pilot books, almanacs, tidal stream atlases etc which have lots of information but not necessarily in the right order as they say. Often tidal streams are printed together on pages nowhere near pilotage information with useful contact details elsewhere. So Robert set out to write a book which was more user friendly combining all the relevant information for each passage spread across two A4 pages.
The HOW
He travelled, often with his wife, by Sea and land and used a drone for aerial photographs. A powerboat was crucial for being able to arrive at certain places by certain times so they purchased a small Orkney fishing boat which could be trailered and launched close to where they wanted to be. To save parking fees they often walked a long way to the sea and Robert believes they have walked most of the South West coast path. He was able to negotiate with the UKHO to use the visitmyharbour licence to include chartlets in the book but had to use different colours from those used by UKHO.
Why should we be thinking about this now? In the past researchers and the Hydrographics office would feed into publishers such as Imray and Adlard Coles who would publish books, charts, pilot books and tidal atlases. Currently the digital future looks like it will be will be something like this :-
At this point Robert asked for questions and it became rather heated with some people quick to complain about what will be lost in terms of resources and skills. How will students be assessed on competence if they don't have to show passage planning and chartwork skills? Others couldn't see a problem with relying on digital. What Robert was saying is this is the way it's going and we need to think about how we adapt.
The book is available from the Haslar marina office or directly from Robert himself rb_swpp@outlook.com with all profits going to 2nd Cowes (St Mary's) Sea Scout Group. In addition to all the useful information it contains there are lots of beautiful photographs and it would make an excellent stocking filler.
Cathy Hems
Related
- Talk: Southwest Passage Planning by Robert Bailey (29 November, 19:00 - 23:00)
Last updated 17:24 on 2 December 2024