- Teacher: Thomas Beaver
- Teacher: Cedric Robertson
- Teacher: Stephen Waite
This online seminar can be started as soon as you receive the link or by going to the course calendar drop down on the main web page and selecting Moodle Login. The Seminar is designed to be done in one sitting of about 90 minuets.
For the safety of oneself, the boat’s crew and the boat itself, the boater had best be prepared to take tides and currents into consideration when planning a voyage of any length in tidal waters. Failure to do so can result in the vessel’s running aground or, just as embarrassing and damaging, snapping off a mast in a collision with a bridge or utility cable stretched across a tidal river.
It is not possible to cover every detail of the subject of tides and currents within the constraints of this seminar, but it will certainly give the student a solid introduction to the subject. To learn more, we highly recommend boaters take the CPS-ECP courses, Boating 4: Near Shore Marine Navigation Level I and Boating 5: Near Shore Marine Navigation Level II. Tides and currents are covered more extensively in those courses.
There’s nothing can quickly ruin a pleasant cruise on a sunny afternoon than getting caught in a sudden, unexpected storm. This show of Mother Nature’s powers can be frightening at the very least, and fatal in its worst form. Weather For Boaters presents many of the basic meteorological principles that create our weather, and is an excellent primer for the more advanced Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons course, Introduction to Weather For Recreational Boaters.
Many boaters like to spend all or part of their winters sailing in tropical waters, and no doubt wonder what sort of weather they might encounter. The meteorology behind winter weather in the Tropical Zone is very much different from that which we experience here in the mid-latitudes. This seminar gives us a quick review of mid-latitude weather, and then explains the differences that we would find in the tropics, and why they are different.
Anyone who does all or most of their boating on our oceans, must have an intimate knowledge of the natural cycles of the tides, and the sometimes dangerous currents they can generate. This seminar cannot cover every detail of tides and currents, but is an overview of tidal basics and is an excellent primer for the Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons courses, Near Shore Marine Navigation Level 1 and Level 2. Inland waters, such as the Great Lakes do not experience tides, but there is a short section in the seminar dedicated to the “seiche,” a natural, irregular phenomenon, that causes tide-like changes in water levels in these waters.
Pollution of the waterways on which we do our boating is not new, but has always been lurking in the background. However, the discovery that huge garbage patches are gathering in our oceans has snapped us out of our dream, and waterways pollution has moved to the forefront. This seminar, based on research done by several scientific groups, including National Geographic Society, will shock many when they see how critical the situation is.
Pollution of the waterways on which we do our boating is not new, but has always been lurking in the background. However, the discovery that huge garbage patches are gathering in our oceans has snapped us out of our dream, and waterways pollution has moved to the forefront. This seminar, based on research done by several scientific groups, including National Geographic Society, will shock many when they see how critical the situation is.