Boat › Navigation electronics › Paper charts

Electronics can fail, so it is worth knowing how to navigate with a paper chart. This video is a basic introduction to sea charts: reading depths and bridge heights, plotting magnetic and true courses from the compass rose with a parallel ruler, measuring distance in nautical miles, and converting between magnetic and true bearings.

Compass variation and deviation

Open ›

The chart gives true bearings, but the compass reads magnetic and is often pulled off by the boat itself. I show how to apply the chart's variation, then deviation, to get a compass course.