Night Pilotage - what you need to know

As with any pilotage you need a plan, fortunately we have many tools in our armoury when it comes to drawing up a pilotage plan:

• Large scale charts
• Chart plotter or other electronic aids
• Almanac
• Pilot books
• Tidal stream atlases
• Nomad course notes (if you have taken one of our classroom courses or are a member of 'Club Nomad')
• Local knowledge (sometimes available)

In addition you need to know your lights, those displayed by other craft and the types of light characteristics you could expect to see on buoys, this knowledge will be or has been gained in your Day Skipper or Yachtmaster Theory Course or simply through experience.

I personally love sailing and navigating at night and sometimes the lights of a buoy at night are easier to pick up than the buoy itself in daylight. The one thing that can make seeing lights at night very difficult is the plethora of land lights that may be behind them. A good example of this is the South Cardinal Mark, Hamble Point, if you are approaching this from Southampton Water you can see it for miles as there is no land behind it, coming the other way however with the BP oil refinery lights on the land it is a challenge. Plymouth is also an interesting one with it's numerous cardinal marks set against the backdrop of the City of Plymouth, finding white in amongst white requires someone with better eyesight than me!

The other challenge with night sailing is judging distance, very tricky even for the experienced navigator, never say, "we are almost there" 10 minutes later, having not reached the mark ...........

Before we plan to enter any river or harbour we will be checking that we have enough depth to do so, once we have satisfied ourselves that this is the case we can crack-on with the plan. So within our armoury of tools what are we looking for to help us:

• Lit buoys (make a note of any unlit buoys as well, also make a note of the name or number of all the buoys, with a torch this is a good double check on position)
• Sectored lights
• Leading lights
• Any significant landmark that may be lit and we can identify those lights
• Any rules for the area in which we will be navigating
• Should we be listening any VHF channel other than 16

For this exercise I have elected to go to Lymington and head for the Dan Bran visitors pontoon (marked by a pink circle on the chart below), starting at the beginning of the channel. 

The Golden Rule of Pilotage still applies

Other things to consider as the Skipper:

• Check that your navigation lights are working - do this whilst you still have some light - it's much easier to change a lamp when you can see what you are doing.
• Ensure you have a red torch to read you notes on deck.
• Ensure you have a hand bearing compass which can be illuminated - do not hold a torch up against it whilst using it, the batteries in the torch will effect the compass
• Ensure you have a set of binoculars, even better if they have an inbuilt compass and light
• Ensure you have a powerful torch to double check names / numbers of buoys and to find your berth on arrival, the numbers of berths in marinas couldn't be smaller if they tried.
• Know when and where you are going to raise / lower your sails.
• Go through the plan with your crew before you head out, they do not need to know the light characteristics of every buoy at this point but a rough idea of where they are going and what to expect.
• During the pilotage get everyone involved, some people are excellent at spotting lights, also it is colder at night no matter what time of year, keeping people occupied is the best remedy.