A practical, interactive course that makes your navigation safer and more efficient, using live weather data. For power and sail, large and small vessels.
This course covers every aspect of practical marine weather. It starts with the basics and ends with everything you need to plan coastal trips, weekend outings and ocean passages safely and efficiently. It's designed to improve the decisions you make, both while planning and underway, so it covers only the theory that serves that goal.
Learn with real weather. The course uses live weather data, accessed through custom internet links, to illustrate the topics it covers. The course also follows a coastal or ocean passage as it unfolds, comparing the forecast with what actually happened and discussing which decisions would have been best at each point.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
• How weather systems, fronts and pressure patterns form and move
• How to read and use the barometer at sea
• Wind, waves and sea state, and how they affect your vessel
• How to obtain and interpret forecasts, weather maps, satellite images and GRIB data at sea
• How to combine official forecasts with your own observations
• How to factor weather into departure decisions and route planning
COURSE MATERIALS
• Modern Marine Weather by David Burch (textbook)
• Weather Trainer Live software
• qtVlm navigation and weather software
• Online lessons, an instructor-graded quiz for each lesson, and discussion forums
Prerequisites: None. The course starts from the basics. Thousands of mariners have learned weather from these materials and gone on to bareboat charters, day sailing and ocean voyages on their own boats.
Study your way: Take the full course with you on a laptop while you travel, work independently with the printed materials and their practice exercises and answers, or join the online course for discussion and a quiz on each lesson.
Platform: Mac or Windows.