Gary's first Inshore Skippers practical session

I enrolled in the Inshore Skipper Certificate course. The course is a sailing based course accredited with Yachting Australia and run by the Winter School of Sailing here in Darwin. It's an intensive 10 week course with theory session one to three times per week and four practical session on John and Jenny's Farr 38.

Last Sunday we hit the harbour for our navigation practical and what a nice day it was. Overcast so not too hot but enough breeze to get some decent sailing in.

The aim of today was to plot a course to sail allowing for the tidal current. For those who dont know Darwin harbou

r we have BIG tides and of course Sunday was a spring tide so we had plenty of current to allow for. During my turn at plotting the chart tidal data said we would have 2.5 knots of tide pushing us out of the harbour and the wind was on the port quarter. Naturally as soon as I gave the helmsman/person the course

the wind change and we could hold my course so they then gave me what they could steer and I then determined where that would take us and a point at which we would need to gybe to get to our mark 10 nautical miles away. It wasnt long and the helmsman gave me more bad news on the course they could steer as the wind shifted.

Little did I know that they guys up on deck had a GPS had having quite a good chuckle at my use of the charted 2.5 knots of current that was actually 3.5knots. Sailing at 5-6knots that tidal stream made a huge difference.

Jenny had a big smile on her face as we each battled Darwin's big tide.

Fighting our way back to the pontoon was fun with the tide and the wind eased. We were making 1.5 knots over the ground while the log showed us sailing at 4.5 through the water.

The action at the chart table.

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