Pilotage — eyes up, plan ready

Pilotage is navigation where there is no time to plot: harbours, rivers, rock-strewn approaches. The work moves to before you arrive — a single page you can follow with your eyes up. The plan is a sequence: from the safe-water mark, 047° towards the leading marksleading lightsTwo lights that line up, one above the other, when you are on the safe approach line.full glossary →; at No. 3 buoy turn 112°; clearing bearingclearing bearingA pre-drawn bearing you stay one side of to keep clear of a danger.full glossary → — keep the church OPEN left of the headland until the moorings show. Distances, depths to expect, and the light characters of every mark you will pass, in order.

The strong techniques are the ones that do not need instruments: transits (two objects in line — on the line or off it, instantly); leading lights or marks (a maintained transit straight up the channel); clearing bearings (a pre-drawn line you stay one side of); and back bearings to hold a line when the marks are behind you. Buoy-hopping — positively identifying each mark before leaving the last — beats trusting a plotter screen in close quarters, not least because buoys themselves can drag.

Run the plan backwards too: the tide that carried you in will be somewhere else when you leave, and night turns a familiar entrance into a wall of shore lights. Decide in advance what “it has gone wrong” looks like — the depth that should not be there, the mark that fails to appear on time — and what you do next: stop, hold against the tide, and re-fix.