Marine Weather Online Home Study Course

Marine Weather Online Course

A practical, interactive course that will make your navigation safer and more efficient. For power and sailing vessels, large and small.

For Mac or Windows

This course covers all aspects of practical marine weather, starting from the very basics and ending with all you need to plan your voyages — or weekend outings — safely and efficiently taking into account the weather. This is intended to be a practical course that will indeed affect your decision making when planning and underway. We only cover those aspects of the "theory" that will help us with this goal.

This course uses live weather data accessed through custom Internet links to illustrate many of the topics it covers. We will also monitor a hypothetical coastal or ocean passage at the time of the course to see how the real world evolved and what decisions might be best at the time.

No prerequisites are required, we start from the basics. Many thousands of students have successfully learned weather from these materials and gone on to bare boat chartering or day sailing or world cruising in their own boats. Please see General Course Information and Frequently Asked Questions for more details.

With the electronic components, you can take the complete course with you as you travel, or use it to search the complete set of materials for specific topics. If you prefer to work on your own without computers, you have a complete syllabus with practice exercises and answers in the printed materials. If you want extra structure to your training, then take part in the online course for more discussion and individual quizzes at each lesson.

Each Starpath course includes free access to our online Resources and discussion forums. The Student Discussion Forums are similar to our Public Discussion Forums, but they are much more extensive including all classroom discussion since 2003. We have instructors in three different time zones, so if any question comes up, just post it in the Student Discussion Forum for a quick answer—or search to see if someone has already asked the question for an even faster answer.

You will receive:

• Printed Textbook: Modern Marine Weather
• Resource Software: Starpath Weather Trainer Live
• Online Course: Assignments, Lectures, Discussions, Instructor Contact, and quizzes
• Also includes a free ebook copy of The Barometer Handbook

Duration

Estimated to be about 30 to 60 hours of your time, depending on how much optional material you wish to cover. You work at your own pace on your own schedule.

Dates

You can start at any time, and submit quizzes and discussion any time of day or night. The lesson quizzes must be submitted sequentially. You have one year to complete the course or request an extension.

Course description

This course covers all aspects of practical marine weather, starting from the very basics and ending with all you need to plan your voyages — or weekend outings — safely and efficiently taking into account the weather. This is intended to be a practical course that will indeed affect your decision making when planning and underway. We only cover those aspects of the "theory" that will help us with this goal. This online version is a combination of our

This course uses live weather data accessed through custom Internet links to illustrate many of the topics it covers. We will also monitor a hypothetical coastal or ocean passage at the time of the course to see how the real world evolved and what decisions might be best at the time.

Instructors

• David Burch, Starpath School of Navigation
• Lee Chesneau, US National Weather Service
• Kenn Batt, Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Larry Brandt, Starpath School of Navigation

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for the Weather Course. It is important to follow through on the assignments and work some of the practice problems in each lesson, because some terminology is presumed understood once it has been introduced and explained.

Student Objectives

• Understand the relationship between shipboard forecasting and use of official sources
• Know how to read the natural signs of weather observable from the vessel
• Know the official sources of marine weather underway and how to use them
• Understand the use and value of a barometer
• Know how to read a weather map for tactical route planning purposes
• Have an overview of global weather patterns
• Know how terrain affects the wind
• Learn the answers to many practical questions in marine weather
• More reasons to take the weather course

Certification

This course will prepare you for marine weather aspects of any certification test, including professional licensing exams. We do not know of organizations other than Starpath that offers training certification specifically in marine weather, but you can add our certification stickers to your US Sailing or ASA logbooks as "Extra training." The Starpath certification is recognized internationally through the the International Association of Sailing Schools.