How to sail safely and avoid collisions. What should you do when you meet a sailing boat, a motor boat or a ship? Find the answers to the most common sailing scenarios with PBO’s Colregs Made Simple app. Easy to follow photo sequences and video clips make the rules of the sea simple to understand and remember. Plus – we put the RYA’s ex chief examiner in the video box to bring you his expert analysis of each tricky situation you’re likely to come across.

The problem with reading the Colregs is that it can be difficult to relate a densely-worded regulation to a situation you are likely to encounter out at sea. We wanted to show some real-life situations and how to get out of them – but it would be foolhardy to sail in front of tankers, cross perilously close to fishing boats and irritate motorboaters. There had to be another way.
Pilots and ships’ deck officers head to the Warsash Maritime College’s ship-handling centre, at Timsbury Lake near Romsey in Hampshire, where they learn the ropes in a fleet of scale models. But these are no ordinary models: they are around 30ft (9.1m) long and weigh 8 tons, and have the same handling characteristics as their full-size brethren. We assembled a fleet of Micro Magic sailing yachts, and contacted the Solent Radio Control Model Boat Club, whose members came up trumps and arrived with a number of scale powerboats, fishing and pilot vessels for us to put in peril.

This app is not a definitive guide to the Colregs – instead, it’s an aide-memoire to the rules you’re likely to need when you encounter another vessel at sea.