NG 05/11/2023

Blog Day 4

    I did so much work today that my brain might be more fried than when I’m in regular school. I’m really happy with my progress and hard work. In the morning, I continued learning about the rules of the road, which was starting to become so annoying. I’m sick of learning stuff that I just have to memorize. I learned more about lights upon fishing vessels, sailing vessels, and power-driven vessels. For these, I have to make flashcards based on my notes in order to memorize them. To wrap this all up, I learned about the visibility of these said vessels. The biggest lesson that I learned taught me that “the larger the vessel, the greater the range of visibility of the lights being shown.” As the vessel gets over 50 meters in length, the lights can be seen up to 6 nautical miles away. This lesson also included lights on submarines which I didn’t realize I’d be learning in this course but it was still cool. Afterward, I learned about lights in towing and pushing situations. This is going to be so hard to master because I have to remember the difference between lights inland vs. lights international. In the afternoon, I was introduced to the topic of voyage planning. This took a few hours because I had to do a couple practice situations to truly understand the topic. It’s interesting to hear laws from the coast guard that I have just never followed but now probably will. Apparently, I’m required by law to have a voyage plan every time I go out on the water. During the summer at home, when I want to go out on my boat at home, I just go. No plan, no nothing. Will I change my ways? I think so… text my parents? I took a review quiz on voyage planning and got a 100! After that huge win, I decided to call it quits for the day with learning and read my Chapman Piloting & Seamanship to get a couple homework chapters down. 


Today’s Hours: 7

Total Hours: 27

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