Seamanship Grade: S

Building on the basics of recreational boating presented in the public boating courses, Seamanship adds foundational information for continuing boater education. The course contents should facilitate knowledge development for increased safe operation of recreational boats and provide the basis for completion of USCG licensing examination. Emphasis within the course has been placed on higher level boating skills, rules of the road, and marlinspike..

Piloting Grade: P

The Piloting course is the first in the sequence of USPS courses on navigation, covering the basics of coastal and inland navigation. This all-new course focuses on navigation as it is done on recreational boats today and embraces GPS as a primary navigation tool while covering enough of traditional techniques so the student will be able to find his/her way even if their GPS fails. The course includes many in-class exercises, developing the student’s skills through hands-on practice and learning. Topics covered include:

• Charts and their interpretation
• Navigation aids and how they point to safe water
• 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 route.
• Pre-planning safe 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.

Advanced Piloting Grade: AP

This all-new course 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, the course includes many in-class exercises, advancing the student’s skills through hands-on practice and learning.   Topics covered include:

• Review of skills learned in Piloting
• 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

Junior Navigator Grade: JN

The new USPS Junior Navigation 07 course is now available for Squadrons to order!  This is the first of a two-course program of Offshore Navigation for the recreational boater in which students learn about current offshore navigation electronic tools and software as well as conventional route planning techniques.  Students also learn traditional celestial navigational skills to determine position, using these techniques to check their electronics and as the backup navigation technique in the event electronics fail.

Today’s recreational boater uses electronics as the primary means of positioning, and employs celestial positioning techniques as a check that the GPS is working correctly, and as backup in the event that electronics fail. In Junior Navigation, the student will continue to use GPS as the primary position sensor, as they learned to do in Piloting and Advanced Piloting.   However, the offshore environment impacts how one uses the GPS and other electronic tools; the student will learn about some of these considerations in the course.

In the offshore environment, accurate determination of position is just as important as when one is navigating in coastal waters. While offshore, visible terrestrial landmarks are no longer available to the navigator as reference points.  In the Junior Navigation course, the student will learn to substitute celestial objects such as the sun as reference points. The course begins with the study of celestial navigation, teaching the student to take sights on the sun with a marine sextant and derive a line of position from that observation.  The sun represents but a single reference point, so the student will apply the principles of the running fix learned in Advanced Piloting, and be able to plot a running fix of one’s position from the sun sights.  Once the student has learned the basics of celestial sight reduction, the course continues with planning, positioning, and checking one’s position in the offshore environment, using both electronic and celestial tools.