Complete Course CD - Yachtmaster /Day Skipper/Competent Crew.

Price: £49.95

(Members receive 10% off when ordering direct from the publisher.)

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A laptop is an excellent learning aid, and you will not be disappointed by using this CD course from Competent Crew level right though to Yachtmaster.  It is full of useful, clearly written, well illustrated, relevant information and exercises which not only make a really good accompaniment to theory classes which was the intention of the authors, but which also serves as a useful self-teaching course.  Particularly likeable are the animated pictures and diagrams which move one frame at a time on demand giving the student time to absorb each frame separately.  In the accompanying text any term highlighted in blue pops up with its own glossary explanation at the click of a mouse if required.  The course also has an excellent bookmark system which is an easy way of settling back to where you had previously left off, and simple access to the contents from each page makes it easy to use the course as a revision tool. 

The inversion of centre of gravity and centre of buoyancy at the beginning of the stability chapter and some rather outdated photographs discredit the overall content which is generally good.  Unfortunately, the chapter on meteorology has rather poor animations and is difficult to follow in places as it seems to be back to front, starting with not very well-defined cloud formations, and finishing with the weather maps.  Too many different flashing buoy lights on one page make it difficult to interpret individual flashing patterns, and it would be helpful also to portray them alpha numerically.  Similarly, it would have been good to show each individual craft on its own page and animate it through its lights, shapes and fog signals in sound, written dots and dashes and words.

 The navigational chapters are well laid out and clearly explained, and the sections on electronic aids (apart from the omission of AIS), passage planning, and running a yacht are all excellent.  However, access to the glossary information via an index would have been a useful improvement.

This is the best navigation course that I have seen on CD to date, and it is better than many books. The fact that it is available to CA members at a discount, is well worth remembering and if it is successful in financing the authors in their new boat, they jolly well deserve it.              Peter Flower