Coastal Passage & Float Plan PDFSources, Legs, Your Own Limits & the Copy Left Ashore

A limit agreed in the cockpit at breakfast is a decision. The same limit considered at midnight in a rising sea is a negotiation.

This is the one document in the series that is filled in before the event rather than after it, and the only one a copy of which stays with somebody ashore. It records two things: every source behind your plan, with when it was issued and what it actually said, and the limits you set for yourself while the decision was still cheap.

No wind speed, no sea state, no visibility minimum, no distance off and no under-keel margin appears anywhere in this plan. A printed limit would be read as permission, and no document can know your boat, your crew, your coast, or the state any of them are in this morning.

Part IV is a page where you write your own, agreed with the crew, dated, and with a column recording where each figure came from. A limit with a source behind it survives a difficult afternoon; one without does not.

A forecast consulted at 0600 for a 1400 departure is eight hours old, and whether that matters is a judgement you can only make if the time is written down. Three passages later, the same column tells you whether your local forecast runs optimistic, which is worth knowing before it matters.

Leg time, course to steer across a tidal stream, latest departure for a gate, clearance over a charted depth using your margin, endurance under power on your measured burn rate, and, completed afterwards, how optimistic your planning speed turned out to be. Most skippers plan optimistically for years without ever finding out by how much.

In the Fillable edition every line has a field. Type the distance, the speed you plan on and your departure time; in Adobe Acrobat Reader, free on computer, iPhone and Android, the leg times and ETAs, the course to steer across the stream, the clearance at every gate against your own margin, the latest departure for each gate and the time in hand calculate themselves. The forecast is set against the limits you wrote, and the shore copy fills itself from Part I and the plan. The Pencil & Print edition is ruled for handwriting in GoodNotes or Notability, or on paper at the chart table. Both come in A4 and US Letter and work offline.

The skipper leaving familiar water for the first time. Part IV is your document. Writing your own limits down, with the crew, at the pontoon, is the single most useful thing in these pages, because the version of you who set them was rested and unhurried and the version who reads them will not be. Fill the source column honestly, even when the source is your own judgement.

The family boat. The shore copy is why you bought this. Somebody ashore currently has a vague idea of where you are going and no idea what to do if the phone stays silent. One page, filled from the plan, and an agreed hour fix that, and it is a kindness to them as much as insurance for you.

The crew that changes every weekend. The vessel description and the bolt-hole list are what make a boat legible to somebody who has never sailed her. Filled once, reused every passage. Ten minutes a trip after that.

The racer on a delivery or a feeder leg. You are used to sailing hard with people who know the boat, and a delivery is the passage where that assumption quietly stops holding. The watch log and the communication schedule are the two pages that matter, because a tired crew on an unfamiliar coast is exactly the condition a float plan exists for.

The instructor or club fleet. One sheet across every boat means a briefing you give once and a plan anyone can read. The source register also happens to be the best teaching page in the catalogue, because it makes a student state what they consulted and when.

This document teaches no navigation, no collision avoidance and no seamanship. It is not a rule of the road, it is not a substitute for training, and it does not relieve the person in charge of the vessel of a judgement that is theirs alone.

Models C1 to C5 are arithmetic and geometry performed on figures you supply from your own charts, tide tables and engine. They are not a determination that any passage is safe to make.

Instant download. Your links appear on screen the moment payment clears, and a copy arrives by email, usually within a few minutes. They do not expire.

2026 Edition, Revision 2.1, AML-PASS-2026-01. Apex Marine Labs designs the organisational process behind good seamanship. Our documents record and organise; they do not replace training, a qualified instructor, or the judgement of the person in charge of the vessel.