THIS guide assumes a thorough knowledge of coastal navigation, but we offer the following suggestions. COPYRIGHT 2002 DIAMOND PASS PUBLISHING Official, up-to-date coastal charts are an absolute necessity. They are published by NOAA or packaged in Chart Kits by Maptech or as coated charts by Waterproof Charts, Inc.. They are available at most boat chandleries. Do not navigate by road maps, post cards, place mats, souvenir tee-shirts, or even by the charts in this guide. You should also carry tide tables, parallel rules (or similar) for plotting courses, and a compass for following them. Ideally, your compass should be mounted in such a way that you can steer by it and use it to take bearings. If not, you should carry a smaller, hand-bearing compass. COPYRIGHT 2002 DIAMOND PASS PUBLISHING Binoculars will help you find distant marks and landmarks. Binoculars with an internal compass can be used as a hand-bearing compass, either by aiming them where a mark should be or by reading the bearing to a mark that is visible. They also can help you track your drift when you take successive bearings to a particular landmark. IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE VIOLATED When running a compass course, try to take into account any cross-currents (often indicated by lobster buoys) or cross-winds. Deliberately steer slightly to one side of your course or the other. That way, if you don’t know exactly where you are when you make landfall, you will know which way to run down that coast. For example, if you steer slightly to the left of your course to a small pocket beach on a distant shore, when you make landfall, you’ll know to run along the coast toward the right until you find the beach. More info: tidal currents, river currents. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAW. Navigational electronics have recently become so small and affordable that they can be used on even the smallest vessels. They are particularly useful in Maine, where visibility is often reduced by fog. Hand-held GPS units now have enough memory that waypoints can be plotted and stored before you take to the water, and some can even graphically plot your progress and store your routes. Be thoroughly familiar with the use and the limitations of your receiver before you rely on it in fog, and remember that the time you need to use your GPS is not the time you will want to be calculating your waypoints from the chart, particularly in a small boat. Prepare your navigation before the morning leg or the day in advance. PLEASE RESPECT AND SUPPORT THE WORK THAT HAS For the sake of accuracy, we do not recommend using somebody else’s waypoints, waypoint lists, or waypoints published on charts such as Maptech's Chart Kits. The latitude and longitude coordinates included in this guide's harbor descriptions are for general reference only. Either determine your waypoints from the chart, or record them at their location ahead of time, and check them against the chart before you use them. To minimize mistakes in taking waypoints off the chart or in entering them into your receiver, a good practice is to also measure the bearings and distances between waypoints on the chart and compare them to the bearings and distances calculated by the receiver. If they differ greatly, something is wrong.