Metropolitan Police Sailing Club

17/06/2025

https://jobs.theguardian.com/job/9615397/boat-operator/
This may suit someone who is thinking about retirement. The salary isn't much but there's a free cottage accommodation.

We are looking for someone with an MCA Boatmasters and STCWs qualification to skipper a class V 37 passenger vessel in Poole harbour.

12/04/2025

Do you understand what your radar and plotter are telling you? The picture shows a plotter together with vectors for surrounding vessels and a radar also showing the vectors for surrounding vessels. They seem to be different, why is that? So is there a danger of collision or not? Which is correct. The real message of course is to make sure you use your radar in good visibility then you'll feel more comfortable when the fog closes in unexpectedly..

06/02/2025

Great to see the Metropolitan Police Sailing Club moving forward with the new directors. An uphill task after the mismanagement and neglect from those directors pre the last AGM.

A great newsletter with some interesting opportunities.

03/11/2023

An interesting screenshot from Bramblemet yesterday (Hope no one was out to experience it). The pressure shows 955mb and they mentioned on one of the weather forecasts that we experienced the lowest November pressure since records began. Does that matter. Well if you look at the tidal height or more importantly the tidal surge, it was 1.2 metres above prediction. That's a big difference!

04/11/2022

Many people are confused about how to fit the hydrostatic release on a yacht and how it operates. This gives such a clear demonstration.

If a ship sinks and no controlled embarcation to Life Raft was possible, it is of out most importance the Life Rafts can surface and save lives. We show you ...

16/05/2022

Anyone about to start their comp crew course, might find this technical diagram of nautical terms useful.

30/03/2022

Great to see the club putting on some cruises further west. I always love sailing the Jurassic Coast where there are some awesome places to visit, where the focus is the glorious coastline and excellent harbours often where you’re less bothered by harbourmasters demanding loads of cash. Some memories of past trips are still very vivid.

27/03/2022

A clorious March morning to wake up to. Bacon and egg rolls eaten, pain au choc demolished, the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, time for a sail.

18/11/2021

As always Tom is a great source of knowledge.

Ever wondered what goes on up Calshot Tower? Join me as I climb up to meet the volunteers for a bird's eye view of shipping. https://youtu.be/KPtJ0aeclJg

13/02/2021

I ran an online quiz yesterday and posed the question that you were on holiday and entering a strange harbour when you come across this buoy. Would you leave it to port or starboard.
We try to train our navigators to confirm their position by different means so a GPS fix we may look for depth or a transit or sometimes a simple check that what we can see is consistent with the GPS position.
What's that got to do with a buoy you may ask. Well the buoy is left to starboard as you are in region 'B'. We tend to look at the colour but remember that it has shape as well and that doesn't change with region. This is a cone which is left to starboard irrespective of the colour. I've known time when I couldn't see the colour of a buoy due to the sun behind it, most notably on my YMI many years ago with Tom Cunliffe and I definitely gained brownie points making a correct and early identification. The moral to keeping safe when sailing is to look at all all the information, not just rely on the first or easiest bit.
Good sailing and stay safe.

27/01/2021

Nothing like practising with flares to keep the Day Skipper class entertained and happy in their learning. This was from last year before lockdown

19/12/2020

Unashamedly borrowed from a colleague, I've not posted for a while but I thought this shows all the features of how many see practical boat handling.,