Navigation and Planning Online Course
Develop your navigation and planning knowledge
This detailed and comprehensive course goes through everything you need to plan a safe and enjoyable day trip along a coastline. With over 70 lessons the course goes through weather and forecasts, charts and maps, tides and brings all of this together in the planning lessons. The course then moves on to advanced navigation for paddlers wanting to plan trips in more advanced environments on committing sections of coastline. There is also the option to upgrade or purchase separately our British Canoeing certified CNTP and OWNTP course with RYA training chart exercises and assessments built into the course.
Course modules

Weather lessons
- Weather formation
- Synoptic charts
- Sea Breezes
- Fog and low visibility
- Local weather and winds
- Swell and sea conditions
- Weather and tide height
- Marine forecasts
- Beaufort scale
- Online forecasts

Charts and maps lessons
- Introduction
- Latitude and longitude
- Measuring distance on a chart
- Depths and drying heights
- Navigational marks
- Laying off
- Magnetic variation
- Ordinance survey maps

Tides lessons
- Understanding tides
- Tidal streams
- Back eddies
- High water times
- Springs and neaps
- Calculating spring or neap ranges
- sources of information introduction
- Guide books
- Tidal diamonds
- Tidal stream atlas
- 50/90 rule and the rule of thirds

Planning lessons
- Introduction
- Wind, sea state and tides
- Planning considerations
- Timings and distance
- Recording information
- Shore based contacts
- Worked example

Environmental considerations lessons
- ntroduction
- Predicting change through observations
- Buys Ballots Law
- Barometers

Practical navigation lessons
- Introduction
- Kayak setup
- Practical navigation strategies
- Navigating in open water
- Night navigation equipment
- Night navigation strategies

Advanced tidal planning lessons
- Introduction
- Tidal gates
- Tidal gates - Worked example
- Computation of rates

One hour vector lessons
- Overview
- Worked Example - Skerries crossing
- Worked Example - Start and finish points
- Group speeds
- Worked Example - Building a vector
- Worked Example - Calculating ETA
- Worked Example - Summary
- Preparing for errors
- Vector issues

Multi hour vector lessons
- Overview
- Worked Example - Collecting information
- Worked Example - Hour by hour
- Worked Example - Chain vector
- Worked Example - Estimating position
Access this course and all of the other OSK Courses with your subscription
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Full access to the OSK Library of courses and content
- Free 7 day trial
- Access to the full OSK Library of courses + Community
- Accelerate your skills development
- Get unlimited support and feedback from the OSK Coaches
- Increase your navigation and planning knowledge
- Become a safer paddler
- Get inspiration
- Learn about kayaks and equipment
- Interact with a growing community of paddlers
- A whole year of learning for less than a day of on water coaching

Anja, Norway
Great videos that really shows all the aspects of different strokes and skills. would recommend it for both novice kayakers as well as experienced paddlers. Lots of useful tips for me as a coach too.

Kevin, UK
This course is brilliant - very well put together with high definition footage and easy to understand descriptions of techniques. I have used much of the course material on the water and in theory and it is faultless. I just keep going over and over and it never gets old. Great job guys - I thoroughly recommend to beginner, intermediate and enthusiasts alike - great stuff

Lee, USA
Videos are brilliantly shot, simple to follow. Love the use of multiple angles, really helps to understand the full picture of a movement. Great resource, amazing!

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