Kayak Navigation: the Basics

Summer 2008

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Adam Bolonsky

At its most basic, kayak navigation boils down to a handful of skills most anyone can learn in a day or two. To begin, you’ll need a chart, preferably of a place you like to paddle or one you’re thinking of exploring, a deck-mounted or hand-held compass, a sharp pair of eyes and a course-plotting tool.

Charts

Published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US and the Canadian Hydrographic Service in Canada, charts come in a variety of sizes that range from gorgeous 46” x 44” to 11” x 23” government printings that contain a deep level of detail (they make beautiful wall hangings) to 11”x17” commercial reproductions, printed in folio form at somewhat lower levels of resolution, yet with no less detail, available from outfits like MapTech.

Important to remember about charts is that they are drawn in a variety of scales and offer different levels of detail. They always include a distance and latitude scale and, no matter their size, always include the names of islands, capes, peninsulas, etc., as well as the color and number of navigational buoys. Just keep in mind that no matter what scale the chart, one minute of latitude (a chart’s horizontal increment) equals one nautical mile—or about the distance an average paddler can cover in 15 minutes or so.

You can purchase government-issue charts from any full-service marine supplier in numbered series for around $18 each. Also you can download and print them yourself or have a designated reseller print them for you. They’re also available on cd-rom or in regional portfolios from any number of commercial publishing concerns. With practice, their startling wealth of information and high levels of detail can be read in just a few moments. The key is to learn a few symbols.

Rocks, Shallows, Lighthouses

Take a look at the detail section of a chart, showing the outer wilds of Boston Harbor, a place as good as any to look for adventure a few miles from home.

Among the excerpt’s myriad details, you’ll note that the excerpt indicates all of outer Boston Harbor’s significant submerged rocks, each of its islands, all of its sandbars and shoals. Digging a little deeper, you’ll also find that it describes the topography of the Brewster Islands: the nature of their shoreline (rocky, sandy, boulder-strewn, etc.); their wrecks; their lighthouses (two) and the wide range of navigational buoys which surround them (about a dozen). The excerpt also shows the major shipping channel, The South Channel, where the length of football fields slip by at speeds of eight knots or more.

To depict the wealth of meaning and detail, charts use a wide variety of numerals, letters, colors and codes. Outer Brewster Island, for example, is 60 feet tall in its southeast corner and rises to 103 feet at an overlook. It sports a sandspit that snakes out of the island’s southwest corner for nearly a mile. Great Brewster also has a wharf on its southwestern shore and is surrounded by a deep thicket of large boulders. Where would you choose to land if you wanted to explore Great or Outer Brewster? Now have a look at The Graves to the northeast and Little Brewster to the southeast. You’ll note that each has a lighthouse.

A chart graphically describes everything you can expect to encounter when you paddle within its territory: channel markers, navigational buoys, lighthouses, wharves, wrecks, shoreline contours, beach slopes, etc.—landmarks and features which will help you keep track of where you are. The chart will likewise help you assess good places to duck out of bad weather or hunker down in a tent to wait out a storm.

Take a few moments to review the excerpt more carefully. You’ll note a code printed beneath the lavender exclamation point that marks Graves Light (the outer harbor’s northeast corner):

FL (2) 12s 98 ft 24M HORN

Interpreting the code is easy. The lighthouse flashes twice every twelve seconds, lies 98 feet above sea level, is visible on a clear night for 24 miles not including its looming, and is equipped with a fog horn.

By studying your charts before you head out, you’ll be that much more familiar with what you can expect to see and encounter on the water.

Compasses

Compass use is the second navigation skill. Compasses come in two forms: deck-mounted and handheld. Knowing which to use is a matter of finding out which type you find more useful and comprehendible.

Deck-Mounted

Deck-mounted compasses are typically mounted far enough forward on the foredeck that you won’t get a stiff neck looking down at them, yet not so far forward you can’t see their numbers. They’re the most popular kayak compass choice, not only because they’re the easiest to use but because they often come on boats pre-mounted. Deck-mounted compasses tell you, with just a glance, in what direction your boat is pointed. The trick is knowing how to interpret their numbers.

When a deck-mounted compass reads 90, for example, you’re headed east; 180 means south; 270 is west; anything close to 360 or 0, north.

The distinct advantage of a deck-mounted compass is that you can read it in chop and breaking swell—rough weather won’t knock it out of your hand. Remembering the correspondence between east, west, north and south and their corresponding numbers, however, has frustrated more than one novice kayak navigator. So if you’re the type likely to forget the numeric values of north and south and all of the directions in between, you might want to choose a handheld compass first.

Handheld

Handhelds are simplicity, versatility and complexity rolled into a small and inexpensive, durable package.

For starters, the needle on a handheld compass, painted red or a bright phosphorescent color, always points north (or at least what passes for north in your local waters) no matter which way your kayak is pointed. Simply by glancing at the needle you know where north is. Then, viewing the compass as if it were the face of a clock, north is twelve o’clock; east is three o’clock; south is six o’clock; west is nine o’clock. Many paddlers value this quickness of getting oriented towards north above all else.

There’s another advantage to handheld compasses: their bezels. Once you know where north is, you twist the bezel to take bearings off surrounding landmarks. You then use the bearing numbers in concert with your chart to figure out where you are—a fast technique for getting unlost known as triangulation.

Although the intricacies of how to use handheld compasses are more complicated than can be explained in this introductory article, the long and short of handhelds is that their bezels help you take bearings from landmarks without having to spin your boat. Once you’re onshore they’re also invaluable as an orienteering tool when you start wandering in search of drinking water, roads and trails, etc.

Their primary disadvantage is that they’re impractical on long courses and in rough weather—their faces are small and the numbers are difficult to read unless viewed up close. Also you can’t hold onto a handheld while you’re paddling since you need both hands to paddle.

Plotting Courses

The next essential skill is plotting courses by way of a chart and a simple course-plotting tool, then using chart and compass to follow those courses.

Of all the navigation skills, course-plotting and following are perhaps the most rewarding and satisfying skills to learn and use, mostly because they lend paddlers such an immediate and gratifying sense of competence and control. Learning to plot and follow courses also gives you the ability to navigate spontaneously, to go where your eye draws you, to wander out to and investigate destinations you feel drawn towards, all without fear of getting lost or unable to find your way home.

To learn the first of those two crucial skills, you’ll need a chart, your compass and a course-plotting tool.

Course-Plotting Tools

Of the three types of course-plotting tools most kayakers use, the parallel rule and rolling rule have long been classics. The simplest and most practical, however, is relatively new.

Called the Nav-Aid and designed by Chuck Sutherland of Pennsylvania, the Nav-Aid is simply a square plastic card with a compass rose printed on it. A hole poked into the middle secures a thick length of monofilament fishing line with burned knots at either end. It also has a lanyard.

The Nav-Aid works on the same principle as the highly accurate rolling and parallel rules: you place the Nav-Aid on your chart so the center of the tool lies on top of where you are, or think you are. You then use the Nav-Aid to derive the compass route you need to follow to get to where you want to go.

Deriving that route with the Nav-Aid is dirt simple: nothing more than extending the monofilament line and connecting where you are to where you want to go. You read where the line crosses the outer ring of the compass rose. That’s the compass course you need to follow. The only trick is to scribe the Nav-Aid with a Sharpie pen or grease pencil to account for your area’s version of magnet north. Otherwise using the Nav-Aid is quite straightforward and has the added advantage that you can store it on your deck at all times, in place and always ready for use.

Putting it into practice

Reading charts, using a compass, plotting a route. These are three basic skills you’ll need to learn to navigate your kayak. Of the three, chart reading is the easiest to learn at home. All you need is a chart and the willingness to study it with a sharp eye focused on the chart’s rich palette of symbols, icons, colors, numbers and codes.

Compass reading is a skill you really can’t practice at home. Instead, you’ll want to head down to an area you already know pretty well and paddle around pointing your compass or your bow at landmarks so that you learn where those landmarks lie according to the compass.

The beach you always put in at, for example. Where is it really located? In other words, where does it lie in relation to the island you always paddle to? Does the island lie southeast of the put-in? 140-degrees of the put-in? Does reading your chart then tell you that that hill on the far end of the island is 85 feet high, has a lighthouse on it visible for 18 miles, and that not only the island but lighthouse lie due north of a red nun buoy (and a shipping channel!) that throws a flash pattern, at night, of two flashes every three seconds?

The long and short of kayak navigation is this: learning to navigate will greatly expand the range and variety of places you paddle. Armed with the confidence to leave behind the same-old destinations, your navigation skills will deepen that mysterious and ineffable desire to paddle a small and fast, remarkably seaworthy and skinny little boat.