Come and try by yourself!
Do not hesitate to contact us to come over to Port Revel for a visit or for a course.
Training on the scale models provides experience that could never be gained on real ships for the simple reason that neither ship-owners nor local authorities would allow such risks to be taken.
Scale models allow the shiphandler to make mistakes.
Scale models allow experimentation on ship behaviour to explore unknown fields beyond the limits of safety.
Periodic training on scale models will maintain your shiphandling skills at the highest level and periodic evaluations will show it.
Shiphandling Courses
The courses are given by extremely experienced instructors,
all of whom are former maritime pilots.
Certificate
We fight against falsification of our certificates! Do not hesitate to contact us to check real attendance to our courses.
Course content
Their aim is to enable Masters and Pilots to develop and acquire new skills through a better understanding of a ship’s behaviour sailing in restricted water conditions at manoeuvring speed. Periodic training on scale models will maintain your shiphandling skills at the highest level and periodic evaluations will show it.
- The courses last 4 or 5 days from Monday morning or evening to Friday evening.
- They are run from April to November each year on 4 or 5 weeks-on, one week-off (for maintenance) frequency.
- They consist of theoretical lectures (1-2 hours each morning) followed by practical exercises on the lake using the models.
- The centre can accommodate up to 10 participants at the same time.
- They embark on the models in pairs.
- They change model and partner during the day.
- Each student is alternately captain and chief engineer-helmsman.
Due to Froude’s laws of similitude applied at Port Revel, the time scale is the square root of the linear scale, i.e. square root of 1/25 = 1/5 at the centre. After a week’s training, the captains and pilots have had about 35 hours of practical shiphandling. To carry out the same number of manoeuvres in real life they would need almost 175 hours!
For further reading, see Françoise Massard's detailed report "Training at Port Revel".
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