1. Draw your ground track from start point (A) through and beyond your end point (B).
2. Measure the distance of your ground track from A to B using your dividers, measure this against the scale on your chart to determine the distance.
3. Estimate the time it will take your boat to travel from A to B, rounding the time to the nearest hour or half hour (T).
4. Check the times of high (HW) and low water (LW) on tide tables to establish a tidal ladder, which you can use to estimate your passage time, plus or minus HW.
5. Establish whether tide is running on springs, neaps or in between and use a tidal diamond to find the speed and direction of tidal flow. If you’re in between neaps and springs, remember to use the range and computation of rates chart to find the speed at which the tide is running.
6. Plot your tide stream from A to C.
7. Use your boat speed to establish the distance you will travel in Time, use your dividers to strike the distance from C to cross the ground track at D.
8. Note: you should never just join up C to B.
9. C to D shows your water track and your True course to steer.
10. The True course to steer must then be corrected for leeway followed by variation and deviation.
11. Remember to note down your course to steer instructions in your logbook once you have communicated it to the helm.
12. If you need a course to steer over many hours then be sure to add each hour of tide to your course to steer.

Steps credit from: https://www.savvy-navvy.com/blog/how-to-plot-a-course-to-steer