Build Your Confidence and Skills for the Upcoming Season

Boating Season

Feb 22, 2024

Whether your summer boating plans include a trip to your favorite fishing hole, day trips with family and friends or a weeklong leisurely cruise, our knowledgeable volunteer instructors can help you prepare for your water related adventures with these featured courses: 

Practical Weather for Boaters

This course will improve your understanding of the systems that cause weather. It will help you use forecasts more intelligently and to augment forecasts with local observations. This will improve your decision making. It will help you develop keen judgments in “reading” the sky and sea for optimum boating safety in and around Canadian waters.

Boat and Engine Maintenance

Keep the water on the other side of the wall! From spark plugs to bottom paint, this course covers all the basics for do it yourself” boaters. This course will equip you with the knowledge required to prevent onboard problems, carry out specialized tasks and tackle both short-term troubleshooting as well as long-term boat care. It features practical information and handy tips suitable for both new and existing boat owners. The dream of owning, maintaining and using your own boat without great expense can be achieved through the completion of the Boat and Engine Maintenance Course.

Basic Navigation and Boat Handling – Part 1 and 2

This course includes sections covering basic navigation skills (using a compass, reading and interpreting nautical charts, using chartplotter, smartphone or tablet and manual navigation skills needed to navigate safely including locate a position (i.e., identify latitude and longitude coordinates), set direction and measure distance. This course includes practice cruises using your navigation device and manual navigation skills. Safety topics include understanding how to use navigation aids – buoy system, legal responsibilities, selecting and using lines and knots, anchoring, docking, the impact of weather on boater safety, electrical hazards, collision avoidance rules, using tide and current tables, and other related topics.

Required certification courses to obtain a Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC), or a Restricted Operator Certificate – Maritime (ROC-M) for your VHF radio are always available 24/7 online.

Sign-up for a course today: www.boatingcourses.ca

CPS-ECP Members are eligible for 10%-25% discounts on select courses.

Not a CPS-ECP MEMBER? JOIN TODAY.

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VISION 2023: ALL ABOARD FOR THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE & AGM IN WINDSOR, ONTARIO!

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Hotel reservations or call 1-800-991-8888 (quote Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons group code ACP1016)

I encourage as many Members as possible from across the country to join us at Vision 2023, this year’s CPS-ECP National Conference & AGM, in Windsor, Ontario. Visit our Conference page at www.vision2023windsorcps-ecp.ca for details. It promises to be a full and exciting agenda at Caesars Windsor, with a great view of the busy commercial shipping (9,000 vessels per year) on the Detroit River separating Canada and the US.

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The Port Hole has been, and remains, very effective in getting the word out nationally on CPS-ECP programs and, by extension, members’ involvement in those initiatives. This is a wonderful opportunity that relatively few organizations can boast of.

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The new Yacht Club will be a must on the itineraries of sailors, boaters and yachtsmen with a marina that can accommodate a range of vessels from power boats, sailboats and catamarans, to super yachts of up to 200 feet. Located in Sprat Bay harbor, the Yacht Club will be its own destination with a dedicated swimming pool for Yacht Club guests, Drunken Pelican restaurant and bar, a commissary, Sea Chest Boutique and a sports recreation area with pickleball, basketball and bocce ball courts and a lawn-games area. To protect the coral reef and marine life surrounding the island, moorings will be located in White Bay, Sprat Bay, Deadman’s Bay…

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