Day Skipper Notes

I completed my Day Skipper course this year, and I want to use this space to work through what I actually understood from it — not as a course recap, but as a place to think out loud about the pieces of navigation and seamanship that stuck with me, and the ones I’m still turning over.

Day Skipper covers a lot of ground in a short time: chartwork, compass theory, tidal calculations, collision regulations, basic meteorology, engine checks, radar and electronic aids, passage planning. Some of it clicked immediately. Some of it I can execute but couldn’t yet explain well if someone asked me why it works. Writing tends to expose that gap faster than anything else, so this category is where I’ll close it.

I plan to break this down into focused posts on the individual instruments and systems — chart, compass, radar, sonar, tide — each one working through the underlying principle rather than just the procedure. The goal isn’t a study guide; it’s building an understanding solid enough that I could explain it to someone else from first principles, which is usually the only real test of whether you understand something at all.

More to come as each topic gets written up.