Water Based Navigation

Today was another Duke of Edinburgh training session, this time with 2 Gold groups as part of their 4 day practice. The venue was Langorse Lake, only a small area of water. The challenge for Sue & I was to create a challenging series of exercises that would teach them something useful as well as giving them a good day.

We started with a timed paddle to give them an idea of their pace, and also the effect of the wind. We even managed to arrange a good bit of wind to make the exercise work.

Following this was a land based exercise to discuss the optimum inland lake navigation techniques which we surmised as being “keep in touch with the map; tick of landmarks; navigate against land based features; compass only to check direction). We then did a compass bearing exercise on the land as a safety technique (bad weather etc.). This was followed by a water based exercise on bearings where they seemed to do a quite good job.

The last, and longest exercise, after lunch, was an orienteering type event with each group putting out controls, and then each group bringing in the course set by the other. It worked with no problems.

They seemed to enjoy it and they all said it was useful. A great success we think.

Duke of Edinburgh

Sorry about the big gap since the last blog. I’ll try to do better.
Saturday was a busy day with Sue helping train the Silver award kids (young adults?). Sue & I had been up to Table Mountain above Crickhowell and sorted out some training exercises as the delegates followed a route that took them eventually to their overnight camp. It was good to have a group of boys who were both bright and willing to learn. The great weather was also an asset.
The evening was a night hike across the front of Sugarloaf. This was another success as I let the group make a couple of mistakes and guided them to some understanding of the challenges of low visibility navigation.

The whole day was tiring but enjoyable. I think they got some good learning as well as enjoying themselves.