New Course – Safe Navigation in Confined Waters

The word navigation has its roots from the Latin “navis” which means “ship” and “agere” which means “to drive”. The process of navigation entails the determination of the position of a ship, to track its movement along a route. While navigating a vessel, risks will most probably occur, and navigators must always be prepared at any moment as there is no room for mistakes on board. “Safe Navigation in Confined Waters” by SafeLearn is the new course aiming to provide solutions and answers and refresh the navigators’ knowledge, through practical scenarios.

One of the core safety aspects of passage planning is your ability to identify and map out high-risk areas correctly. Subsequently, you must be able to execute your voyage while staying clear of such “dangerous” areas.

These so-called “no-go” areas are locations where the vessel cannot and should not go out of safety concerns. Such areas are dangerous because of a shallow nature, any identified surface/subsurface obstructions or any other conditions which threaten and compromise the safety of the vessel.

In researching these topics, we found that a large percentage of accidents and near misses were caused by improper passage planning before the actual voyage even took place. We combined our findings with the expertise of our nautical authors and the guidance of Prof. Capt. Ralph Becker Heins to conclude a set of practical scenarios which will help you acquire the knowledge necessary to navigate the vessel in confined waters safely.

By completing the Safe Navigation in Confined Waters online course, you will:

• Cover the basics of passage planning and understand how to evaluate tidal information, judge where no-go areas are required and make good use of clearing lines in confined waters.
• Understand the need-to-know details of digital passage planning.
• Familiarise yourself with the advance predictor functionality of the ECDIS equipment to increase turn safety, parallel index line procedures and the usage of anchor watch tools.

Once you complete the course, you will be allowed to test your acquired knowledge using the interactive e-exercise assessment, where the practical part of your training takes place.

“Safe Navigation in confined Waters” goes hand in hand with the recently released online course “Mastering Daily Navigation”. You may experience each of the two courses individually or as a bundle, both of which are now available for purchase on the Safebridge online shop.