A pilotage plan is a written, step-by-step story of your passage, from departure to your marina slip, that tells you what you should see out the window at each stage. At night it is the difference between recognising the one light that matters and guessing among hundreds. And it still gets you home when the electronics quit.
If you can run a route on your chart plotter in daylight but a night approach past a city skyline still rattles you, this is for you. The fix is not more screen time. It is a piece of paper.
A hundred lights, and one of them is yours
Approaching a city harbour at night is genuinely overwhelming the first time. You have the backscatter of your own lights on the window, a city skyline glowing behind the entrance, navigation marks mixed in with street lights, car headlights, and neon. Somewhere in all of that is the one light you need to steer for, and if you do not know its exact sequence in advance, you will not find it. That is when owners start second-guessing their position, and second-guessing at the helm at night is where mistakes come from.
Travelling at night at sea is disorientating even before the harbour. The pilotage plan exists so that at every stage of the trip, you and your watchkeepers already know what should be out the window. When what you see matches what is written, you relax. When it does not, you slow down and sort it out. Either way, you know.
What it isThe passage, told as a story you can check
The pilotage plan is the night-time companion to your passage plan. Where the passage plan lives in the navigation software, the pilotage plan lives at the helm, written down on paper in nice bold writing, or on an iPad with the text big, and shared with every person standing a watch. It walks the trip from point A to point B, literally up to the point you are lining up the slip, as a sequence of things a watchkeeper would see out the window if the boat is in the right place, heading the right way.
This is where your chart knowledge earns its keep. Every light on a chart has a listed character, its colour and its rhythm. Pull the ones that matter for your route out of the chart and into the plan before you leave, and the harbour approach stops being a wall of light and becomes a checklist.
How we build itThree columns and a story
The format I use is simple. Down the side, the waypoints from the passage plan. Next column, the bearing from each waypoint to the next, so if you are ever navigating on the compass alone you can read it straight off: arriving at waypoint two, steer 310 to reach waypoint three. Then a comments column, and this is where the plan comes alive. That is where you write the conspicuous things: at waypoint two, 90 degrees off the port side, you will see a red light flashing every five seconds.
A conspicuous mark does not have to be a navigation mark. It just has to be something you can pick out from everything else. A cardinal mark, a distinctive flash sequence, anything unmistakable. The test is whether a tired watchkeeper can find it among a hundred other lights.
Underway, the plan runs out loud. You tell your watchkeepers, the next light we are looking for is the red one flashing every five seconds, and a minute later someone says, there it is. That moment, repeated leg after leg, is what comfortable night navigation actually feels like. Everyone knows what stage of the plan you are in and what comes next.
It still works when the screens do not
The pilotage plan is also your best hedge against the electronics letting you down. Chart plotters fail, displays glitch, power drops out, usually at the least convenient moment. A boat with a written pilotage plan, a compass, and a crew that has been briefed on it can navigate safely home on the plan alone. That is not a romantic throwback. It is the reason the plan is written on paper in the first place.
While the screens are working, the plan and the plotter check each other. The plotter shows you where you are. The plan tells you what you should be seeing. When the two agree, carry on. When they disagree, slow down, and if you need to, stop. Rule 6, safe speed, applies double at night, and stopping is the cheapest way ever invented to buy back the picture.
How we do itBuilding a pilotage plan, step by step
- Start from the passage plan. List the waypoints down the side, departure to destination, right up to the marina approach.
- Add the bearing for every leg. Waypoint to waypoint, so the trip can be steered off the compass alone if it has to be.
- Pick one conspicuous light per leg. Pull its colour and flash sequence from the chart and write it in the comments, with where it will sit relative to the boat.
- Write it big. Bold writing on paper, or large text on a tablet. It gets read at night, at arm's length, by tired eyes.
- Brief every watchkeeper on it. The plan only works if the person on watch knows what stage you are in and what to look for next.
- Run it out loud underway. Call the next light, find it, confirm, move to the next leg. Match your speed to your certainty the whole way.
The chart plotter shows you where you are. The pilotage plan tells you what you should be seeing. When they agree, relax. When they do not, slow down.