Sea Kayak Navigation

Cost: $90pp

Location: Bayview State Park

Course Description: The ultimate sea kayak navigation workshop! We’ll start with the bare basics: how tides and currents form, the effects of wind and weather on the marine environment and how to read a nautical chart. From there we’ll expand to understanding how to use and decipher the many resources available to us as kayakers when planning a trip. After we have a firm foundation we’ll gradually get more complicated as we start plotting courses and planning trips using a compass, a parallel ruler and dividers accounting for the effects of drift. We’ll cover a range of terminology, be able to find your fixed and estimated positions on the open water and most importantly impart the judgement necessary to plan a variety of trips and outings in your local waterways like an expert.

This is a land based class.

A sampling of the course content includes:

  • Understanding the formation and effects of tides and currents
  • Reading nautical charts and topographic maps
  • Latitude and Longitude/UTM’s
  • Difference between course, bearing and heading
  • Setting a Vector Solution and planning for crossing more than/less than an hour
  • Plotting courses using parallel rulers and dividers
  • Using a land based compass to take a field to map/map to field bearing and triangulate

Prerequisites: None

Ages: 18 and up.

Course Duration: 6 hours

Book Now

Let’s get out and practice all you learned in our Essentials of Coastal Kayaking Level III class!

Our refund policy, personal kayak/SUP policy, Essential Eligibility Criteria and more can be found here.