Night sailing: building night hours and passing night pilotage

Nothing separates a Yachtmaster from a competent day sailor as clearly as the dark. At night the familiar harbour becomes a field of lights, the chart becomes a plan you must trust, the crew becomes more dependent and your own judgement is all that stands between the boat and the breakwater. The scheme knows this, which is why night hours are built into the prerequisites from Day Skipper onward and why the night pilotage exercise is a fixture of every Yachtmaster exam.

How night hours are counted

An hour spent underway between sunset and sunrise, on watch or actively sailing the boat, counts as a night hour. Sleeping below on an overnight passage does not count towards night hours, though the passage still counts towards days, miles and (if over 60 miles) the Offshore passage requirement. Anchored overnight does not count. A dusk race that finishes an hour after sunset yields one night hour; an overnight delivery where you stand two four-hour watches yields eight.

The numbers are modest: 4 night hours for Day Skipper, 8 for Coastal Skipper, 12 for Yachtmaster Coastal. Offshore has no separate night-hour figure but requires two overnight passages among the five qualifying legs, which in practice means far more than 12 hours. What matters more than the count is the quality: night hours as skipper, entering harbours, are worth more to your competence than night hours steering a compass course offshore.

Why Australians fall short

Most Australian club sailing is daytime racing and daytime cruising in good weather. A sailor can accumulate 40 days and 1,000 miles in Sydney or on Port Phillip without ever seeing a harbour entrance in the dark. Night hours therefore have to be planned. The reliable sources are:

• Twilight and evening races that finish after sunset (an hour or two each).
• Overnight coastal races and passage races (a full night each).
• Deliveries north and south along the coast, which are almost always sailed through the night.
• The courses. Day Skipper and Coastal Skipper practicals include night sails; a preparation week will include night pilotage.
• Deliberate night sails from your home port: leave at dusk, sail to the next harbour, enter after dark, anchor, return at dawn. Two of these give you a night pilotage practice and eight or more hours.

Night pilotage: the plan

The exam exercise is simple to describe and hard to do well: take the boat into a harbour or anchorage after dark, using a plan you prepared, with the chartplotter usually switched off. A good plan fits on one page in the cockpit and contains:

1. The approach waypoint where the plan starts, with its position and the depth you expect there.
2. The sequence of lights you will see and their characteristics, in order, so you can identify each one as it appears (Fl G 3s, Q, Iso R 4s and so on).
3. Bearings and distances for each leg, with the course to steer allowing for tide.
4. Transits and clearing bearings: "keep the two leading lights in line", "do not let the breakwater light bear less than 240 degrees".
5. Depth checks: the contour you should cross and where, corrected for the height of tide.
6. The abort plan: where you will turn round and go if anything does not match.
7. The final berth or anchorage, with the height of tide at that time.

Draw it, then walk it in your head: at each point, what will I see, what will the depth be, what happens if I do not see it? The examiner will read the plan before you start and watch how faithfully you follow it.

What examiners look for after dark

• Preparation. Night vision protected (red light below, no white torches in the cockpit), the crew briefed, lifejackets and harnesses on, the plan to hand.
• Identification before commitment. Candidates who steer towards "a green light" without confirming its characteristic fail. Count the flashes.
• Speed. Slow enough to stop within the distance you can see. A yacht entering an unfamiliar harbour at six knots at night is a yacht about to hit something.
• Use of the crew. One person on the bow with a torch and clear instructions, one on the depth sounder calling numbers, one on the plan. The skipper coordinates.
• Depth as a navigation tool. Examiners love a skipper who says "we should be crossing the 10 m contour about now" and is right.
• Honesty. If you lose the picture, say so, slow down or stop, and rebuild it. That is skippering; pressing on and hoping is not.

Australian night hazards

Unlit moorings in nearly every harbour and bay (Pittwater, the Whitsunday anchorages, Port Phillip's foreshore). Fishing gear and unlit fishing boats along the whole coast. Background shore lighting that swallows navigation lights in Sydney, the Gold Coast and Fremantle. Cold water and fatigue in the south. Bar entrances that must not be attempted at night in any swell. Plan for all of them.