HOW TO PLAN A SAFE PASSAGE PART 1

Passage planning is a key part of any boater's skillset but there's more to it than just entering some waypoints in a chartplotter.

- Jon Mendez

Both the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) have made it very clear that every boater should use 'APEM'.

It's not the catchiest of acronyms but it stands for Appraise, Plan, Execute, Monitor and even as leisure boaters we should follow it every time we put to sea.

That might seem like overkill for a quick potter over to a nearby bay for lunch but if you do have an accident and can't demonstrate that you've adhered to it, you might end up on the wrong end of the law. Every trip you make, even to a local anchorage, needs the same considerations, but clearly you don't need to put the same effort into that as you would for a more demanding cross-Channel passage.

So what does APEM actually look like in practice? Let's take a more challenging example of crossing the Channel from Poole to Honfleur.

It starts with Appraise - which covers a multitude of sins including the route, the boat, the crew and, in this case, the paperwork. But for me, I always begin with the destination.