finestgreen
Active member
In November 2023 I took and (spoiler!) passed the YM Coastal practical exam, on a Dufour 390 in the Solent. I was one of four candidate - all going for Coastal, and all strangers before the prep week.
My memory gets a bit hazy under stress so it's possible I've misremembered some of the details below!
My first sailing experience (except a few scattered days in a dinghy) was the Comp Crew in August 2021. I then did Day Skipper in October 2022, and then Coastal Skipper a few weeks before the exam. Before entering the prep week, I had logged: 51 days on board, 35 night hours, 1387 miles, and two days as skipper.
The prep was a great experience in itself, five long days spent testing and refining skills and poking into some parts of the Solent I hadn't been to before.
Then the exam!
The examiner arrived on the boat at Cowes YH around 0800, did the paperwork then assigned each of us a subject to give a safety brief on, then at random picked me to take us off the pontoon first.
I promptly made a hash of things, underestimating the wind and drifting over to the (thankfully empty!) pontoon on the other side of the aisle, but then successfully got off again and made it to the marina exit and put my mind to thinking about navigating out of Cowes…
…At which point the examiner pointed behind me and said “I’ve changed my mind, put us back where we came from”. Then the same again another half dozen times - now that one, now that one but backwards, etc.
The other three candidates went through the same process, then we eventually left the marina for the first time around 1pm.
We bimbled about in the central Solent for a bit doing various exercises, answered questions as they came up, picking up moorings, accidentally bumped Bramble Bank (!), then navigation exercises up and down Southampton Water.
At some point that afternoon my turn for the MOB exercise came up, he was happy with us using the engine and that I picked the “drift down” method (though did call my execution inelegant, fairly).
For the nav exercises, each of us were asked to do a three point visual fix to find our current position then take us to a specified lat/long and confirm it by radar fix. Then each of us got a leg of night pilotage to do, finally ending up at Shamrock Quay on the Itchen for the night - mooring up at around 2300, fifteen hours after the examiner arrived.
We each got an individual day 1 debrief - three “all to play for”s and sadly one “you aren't going to pass this time”.
The second day was a bit more relaxed, relatively speaking, sailing exercises back to the Hamble where we were sent to the coffee shop while each of us got a turn being grilled on theory
This started with flashcards of shapes and lights, then more general irpcs questions and met, etc. I fluffed a bit on steering rules in fog but otherwise did ok. Fairly briefly covered the preprepared passage plan.
My favourite question was: you see a single white light on a vessel, what different things could it be? (Can you guess which one I misse
d?)
And that was that! We went a bit further up the Hamble to the boat's home berth, I took us in, we put the boat to bed and I was surprised and pleased to hear I'd passed!
My memory gets a bit hazy under stress so it's possible I've misremembered some of the details below!
My first sailing experience (except a few scattered days in a dinghy) was the Comp Crew in August 2021. I then did Day Skipper in October 2022, and then Coastal Skipper a few weeks before the exam. Before entering the prep week, I had logged: 51 days on board, 35 night hours, 1387 miles, and two days as skipper.
The prep was a great experience in itself, five long days spent testing and refining skills and poking into some parts of the Solent I hadn't been to before.
Then the exam!
The examiner arrived on the boat at Cowes YH around 0800, did the paperwork then assigned each of us a subject to give a safety brief on, then at random picked me to take us off the pontoon first.
I promptly made a hash of things, underestimating the wind and drifting over to the (thankfully empty!) pontoon on the other side of the aisle, but then successfully got off again and made it to the marina exit and put my mind to thinking about navigating out of Cowes…
…At which point the examiner pointed behind me and said “I’ve changed my mind, put us back where we came from”. Then the same again another half dozen times - now that one, now that one but backwards, etc.
The other three candidates went through the same process, then we eventually left the marina for the first time around 1pm.
We bimbled about in the central Solent for a bit doing various exercises, answered questions as they came up, picking up moorings, accidentally bumped Bramble Bank (!), then navigation exercises up and down Southampton Water.
At some point that afternoon my turn for the MOB exercise came up, he was happy with us using the engine and that I picked the “drift down” method (though did call my execution inelegant, fairly).
For the nav exercises, each of us were asked to do a three point visual fix to find our current position then take us to a specified lat/long and confirm it by radar fix. Then each of us got a leg of night pilotage to do, finally ending up at Shamrock Quay on the Itchen for the night - mooring up at around 2300, fifteen hours after the examiner arrived.
We each got an individual day 1 debrief - three “all to play for”s and sadly one “you aren't going to pass this time”.
The second day was a bit more relaxed, relatively speaking, sailing exercises back to the Hamble where we were sent to the coffee shop while each of us got a turn being grilled on theory
This started with flashcards of shapes and lights, then more general irpcs questions and met, etc. I fluffed a bit on steering rules in fog but otherwise did ok. Fairly briefly covered the preprepared passage plan.
My favourite question was: you see a single white light on a vessel, what different things could it be? (Can you guess which one I misse
d?)
And that was that! We went a bit further up the Hamble to the boat's home berth, I took us in, we put the boat to bed and I was surprised and pleased to hear I'd passed!
