Short interactive drills for the RYA Day Skipper and Coastal Skipper shorebased syllabus. Each one teaches a single skill, tests it until it sticks, and then puts it under pressure on a chart.
True, magnetic and compass. Variation, deviation and the deviation card, both ways up the ladder, then a coastal passage where a wrong course puts you on the putty.
Tidal vectors on the chart: ground track, water track, leeway, then down the compass ladder. The full Day Skipper chartwork chain.
Chart datum, drying heights and bridge clearance, the rule of twelfths, the almanac curve read both ways, secondary port differences — then a harbour entry where the wrong number puts you on the bar.
IALA A marks by day and by light rhythm. Cardinals, laterals, isolated danger, safe water, special. Read the light, name the mark.
Who gives way, and what you do about it. Sail on sail, power on power, the pecking order, then lights, shapes and sound signals until a night encounter reads itself.
06Stand a watch in 3D. Read real navigation lights as their arcs open and close, hang day shapes on real masts, hear fog signals from a bearing, then identify twelve contacts at exam pace.
07Conn the boat yourself, in real time. Feel the no-go zone, take repeated bearings on a light until you can tell a steady one, and keep clear of a starboard-tack yacht before she is close enough to hit you.
Shipping forecast vocabulary, Beaufort scale, synoptic charts and what a falling glass means for tomorrow's plan.
Each tutorial is a ladder of stages. A stage adds one idea, and you clear it by getting 6 of your last 8 right, not by reading about it.
Where it makes sense the drill shows what the mistake does on the water: how far off track, which bank you hit, which vessel you cut across.
Before the number you call the rule. Recall of the reason is what survives to exam day and to the cockpit.
Progress, streaks and the ship's log live in this browser. No accounts. Clear site data and you start as a Deckhand again.