The Examination Module

Imagine this.  You are 800 miles out from Hawaii on your way to Tahiti.  You have been aware for days now that you got a bad batch of diesel fuel, contaminated with goodness-knows-what, and your engine...which has been running rough...finally packs it in.

You have been operating the diesel for 3 hours a day, just to keep your batteries charged so that your refrigerator, your computer, shortwave and all your instruments keep working.  Now, with the diesel dead, your electrics are on borrowed time. 

Four days later, you finish eating up the last of your fresh meat just as the fridge and your onboard instruments - GPS, wind indicators, and knotmeter - all finally stop working. 

You go to the three handheld GPS units you have stashed in cupboards, and discover that every one of them has corroded batteries ("Wasn't it YOUR job to check the hand-held units?"  "I thought you had already done that."  "I checked them in April.").

But there is no problem.  You have taken the AOSA Navigator Module.  You have a zero problem in navigating your way across 1,400 additional miles of open ocean, on in to Tahiti, finding it the same way Captain Cook did in 1769, by using the sun and stars.  Not only do you make it to Tahiti, but you have FUN doing it.  In an odd way, the death of your diesel provided you with a navigational opportunity you would not have explored otherwise. And what a terrific story you now have to tell!

Then you return back home to Canada, take the Sail Canada celestial navigation exam...and you FLUNK it!!

This is all-too-easy to do.  The Sail Canada exam makes use of some special sights that are of interest to navigational hobbyists, but not much used by modern sextant navigators in this era of quartz watches and shortwave time signals.

The AOSA Examination Module will orient you to the special knowledge you need to pass the Sail Canada exam.  In contrast to the Navigator Module, the Exam Module will be primarily a classroom exercise...and will include writing practice exams that will prepare you for the real thing.

The final day of the Exam Module will involve the actual WRITING the Sail Canada exam.  Once this is graded and you have passed it, you will have one prerequisite out of the way for taking your Sail Canada Offshore Certification, should you ever choose to do so.

The instructor of this course, Bob Goethe, successfully challenged the Sail Canada celestial navigation exam at the Cooper Boating office the day after he stepped off the boat following his cruise from Hawaii to Victoria last summer. In February, 2015 he began the process of becoming a certified Sail Canada celestial navigation instructor. 

However, the runway to complete this certification process is typically more than a year...so Bob will not himself be authorized to mark your Sail Canada exam by this coming October.  Once you write the exam, with Bob as invigilator, it will be returned to Vancouver for marking.

There is a principle at play here.  You can sail to Tahiti by star and sextant, and still need to jump through hoops to get the Sail Canada celestial certification.  By the same token, you can have a track record in teaching celestial navigation, and still need to jump through hoops to get certified as an instructor by Sail Canada. If you are want to know more about Bob's existing credentials in navigation, click here.

In its own way, the Exam Module will be every bit as intensely practical as the Navigator's Module was...just with a different objective.

As dated as the Sail Canada exam is in its perspective on celestial navigation, there is something very satisfying about learning some of the same navigational techniques that Joshua Slocum used in 1895 as he became the first person to sail around the world singlehanded.

So you should not think of this module as a way to "just try to pass the exam", but rather as a way of getting more deeply in touch with the long history of ocean exploration and adventure.