Blind Nav in Sailing Exam.

[alant]

I learned afterwards from the sailing school owner who was a mate of the examiner that he generally made up his mind in the first 15 minutes and the rest was just the mandatory stuff for confirmation. I didn't have to do any night work, probably because the school guy told him I'd done loads. I was also told that if it had gone on for a long time it would have been indicative of a borderline case.

I've also heard of all sorts of nasties, some of which I'm sceptical of. For example anchoring under sail and being marked down for reaching in and out first to scope it out.

I remember being told about the guy, who came through the lock at Port Solent, with his sail cover still on & no main halyard attached, whereupon the examiner told him to go back - he had failed, because his boat was not ready for sea.
Probably complete rubbish, but it concentrates the minds of candidates on prep week, when recollected.

 

[Doug_Stormforce]

So how accurate do candidates have to be and over how great a distance?......
..........There seems to be a paradox. If the conditions are right and candidates are allowed a reasonable margin of error for the imponderables the candidate has proved little. If the candidate has to hit b) bang on the nose then the test becomes a measurement of how "lucky" the candidate was.

As already mentioned the blind Nav exercise that is often used on a Yachtmaster exams usually allows the candidate to use depth, compass, speed/log and time. It is principally a Nav exercise using depth.

The reason I value it as an exercise is NOT to ensure the candidate can cope in restricted vis if his GPS and Radar both fail. It's value is in checking the candidate understand how to EP and appreciates how useful depth can be in navigation. I believe depth is often ignored by navigators despite it being often more reliable than many visual fixing techniques. The fog bit is to me actually a bit of a red herring, RYA fog is simply a means to an end.

in terms of accuracy I regularly see candidates arrive at their destination after 2-4 miles of blind Nav and tell me "we are there" with an accuracy of 1 or 2 boat lengths. On occasion that a candidate is out by a few hundred metres I will first ask him if he knows where it went wrong.

The accuracy I will be expecting will vary from exercise to exercise and will depend on a variety of factors (crew ability, motor vs sail, total time/distance between finish point and last bit of easily identifiable sea bed, which contours are in play etc). Essentially a candidate under power with an easy short blind Nav exercise will be expected to perform better than a candidate with the opposite situation.

When doing my Prep many years ago, my instructor started us at one of the green marks at the outer entrance of the Hamble River & we used the 5m contour to go blind all the way up the river, crossing over above Mercury & picking up the next one, proceeding to our intended mark, which was a post near Moody's. All of us got within about 10m of the post.

This must have been many years ago. I'm pretty sure the 5m contour in the Hamble runs straight through multiple marinas and moorings these days

This is just general good practice.

Whenever I charter from Hamble, I always sail / motor directly between port hand piles south of Hamble Point - they're on the 0m contour - depth gauge calibrated!

Most charter yachts will have a lead line on board, calibration by that before you slip the dock should prove effective.

I know someone who did exactly that on his Yachtmaster exam (headed for shallow water and anchored). He was failed because the examiner apparently told him that he should have known that it was a nav exercise and not "real fog"

We quite often hear stories like this, the reality is often that a failed candidate needs a story as to why he failed. Usually it is not down to one single incident, it's is down to his overall sailing/skippering. Poor candidates tend to be poor at multiple things, just as borderline candidates tend to be borderline at just about everything you set them and strong candidates tend to be strong in all areas.

I would be very surprised if a fail was due to a candidate mis understanding an examiners task.

I often find when I talk to an examiner or read an exam report he gives me a very different version of events than the failed candidate. A poor candidate often does not realise how poor he is!

The lead line isn't generally used by the person being examined at the time, it's given to the crew to use to make the soundings less reliable and less frequent in order to challenge a, usually good, candidate.

The examiners like to have fun and test people to the limits of their ability. If they fail these additional tests but meet the pass standard, then pass they will. It makes life more interesting for everyone and helps people, the examiners included, to learn things they might otherwise not.

It is quite unusual for an examiner to make candidates carry out blind Nav using the lead line. I only mention this as I would hate for a potential exam candidate to be reading this thread and expect this to feature in the exam. I'm not saying it has never happened but I am confident that none of the examiners who have ever examined any of our students have asked for this.

When I did my blind nav for my YM practical I was asked after the event why I didnt use the GPS - answer I thought it wasnt allowed.

It is not uncommon for candidates to assume things are harder than they need to be, another common situation is a candidate assuming "the engine has failed" during a MOB exercise despite the examiner making no mention of it.

 

[alant]

As already mentioned the blind Nav exercise that is often used on a Yachtmaster exams usually allows the candidate to use depth, compass, speed/log and time. It is principally a Nav exercise using depth.

The reason I value it as an exercise is NOT to ensure the candidate can cope in restricted vis if his GPS and Radar both fail. It's value is in checking the candidate understand how to EP and appreciates how useful depth can be in navigation. I believe depth is often ignored by navigators despite it being often more reliable than many visual fixing techniques. The fog bit is to me actually a bit of a red herring, RYA fog is simply a means to an end.

in terms of accuracy I regularly see candidates arrive at their destination after 2-4 miles of blind Nav and tell me "we are there" with an accuracy of 1 or 2 boat lengths. On occasion that a candidate is out by a few hundred metres I will first ask him if he knows where it went wrong.

The accuracy I will be expecting will vary from exercise to exercise and will depend on a variety of factors (crew ability, motor vs sail, total time/distance between finish point and last bit of easily identifiable sea bed, which contours are in play etc). Essentially a candidate under power with an easy short blind Nav exercise will be expected to perform better than a candidate with the opposite situation.




This must have been many years ago. I'm pretty sure the 5m contour in the Hamble runs straight through multiple marinas and moorings these days



Most charter yachts will have a lead line on board, calibration by that before you slip the dock should prove effective.



We quite often hear stories like this, the reality is often that a failed candidate needs a story as to why he failed. Usually it is not down to one single incident, it's is down to his overall sailing/skippering. Poor candidates tend to be poor at multiple things, just as borderline candidates tend to be borderline at just about everything you set them and strong candidates tend to be strong in all areas.

I would be very surprised if a fail was due to a candidate mis understanding an examiners task.

I often find when I talk to an examiner or read an exam report he gives me a very different version of events than the failed candidate. A poor candidate often does not realise how poor he is!



It is quite unusual for an examiner to make candidates carry out blind Nav using the lead line. I only mention this as I would hate for a potential exam candidate to be reading this thread and expect this to feature in the exam. I'm not saying it has never happened but I am confident that none of the examiners who have ever examined any of our students have asked for this.



It is not uncommon for candidates to assume things are harder than they need to be, another common situation is a candidate assuming "the engine has failed" during a MOB exercise despite the examiner making no mention of it.

It did back then as well, going up the starb'd side of the river, inside most of the moorings & going over the other side after Mercury, but before Universal. When up top acting as crew, it was nerve racking.

 

[Tony Cross]

I remember being told about the guy, who came through the lock at Port Solent, with his sail cover still on & no main halyard attached, whereupon the examiner told him to go back - he had failed, because his boat was not ready for sea.
Probably complete rubbish, but it concentrates the minds of candidates on prep week, when recollected.

I was told a similar story by my instructor during the prep week before the exam (except the yacht was coming out of Poole which is where we were). The way he told it the examiner stopped the engine to see what the candidate would do. As you say, probably apocryphal but it does make a good point.

 

[Woodlouse]

It is not uncommon for candidates to assume things are harder than they need to be, another common situation is a candidate assuming "the engine has failed" during a MOB exercise despite the examiner making no mention of it.

My examiner specifically said that the engine would be used during the MOB exercise since it would be unrealistic not to do so. He was of the belief that engines don't just refuse to work these days and that YM candidates don't do the exam without having practiced MOB recovery under sail until blue in the face.

 

[newtothis]

My examiner specifically said that the engine would be used during the MOB exercise since it would be unrealistic not to do so. He was of the belief that engines don't just refuse to work these days and that YM candidates don't do the exam without having practiced MOB recovery under sail until blue in the face.

On my YM we were warned that to not attempt switching on the engine during a MOB would mean a fail.

 

[prv]

I remember being told about the guy, who came through the lock at Port Solent, with his sail cover still on & no main halyard attached, whereupon the examiner told him to go back - he had failed, because his boat was not ready for sea.
Probably complete rubbish, but it concentrates the minds of candidates on prep week, when recollected.

I have had engines die on me on quite a few occasions - dirty fuel more than once, run out of fuel (sabotaged gauge), collapsed cooling hose, jammed gearbox linkage, repeated electrical trouble on a petrol engine, incorrectly-assembled fuel valve, various incidents we never really got to the bottom of, and one where the back of the gearbox fell off. The majority of these happened in relatively confined waters, among moorings and pontoons. Most were with what we'd consider "modern" engines, so I'm well aware of the potential for mechanical trouble at any time.

However, despite this experience, I still zip up Ariam's stackpack well before we're tied up, and don't open it before leaving. The reason? Simply that hoisting a big fully-battened mainsail with lazy jacks forms no part of my likely course of action should the engine fail in the river. Unrolling the genoa, yes. Dropping the anchor, yes. Getting out fenders and using the remaining way to come alongside a moored boat or pontoon, yes. But trying to hoist this mainsail rapidly, and unexpectedly, in a confined space is a recipe for disaster, and it would be silly for me to always have it ready for immediate hoisting anyway just because "the book" says so.

What I do tend to do is favour the windward side of a channel if there's no other traffic about, and on Kindred Spirit I often used to undo the anchor lashings just in case. Ariam's anchor is quicker to release with just a single safety hook, but I have been known to have that unhooked before entering harbour when I thought it warranted. Stavros always entered harbour with the devil's claws off the anchor chains, the guillotines opened, and a party standing by on the focsle - I believe that's standard in the Merchant Navy, so my yacht equivalent seems perfectly reasonable.

Pete

 

[Bosun Higgs]

I remember being told about the guy, who came through the lock at Port Solent, with his sail cover still on & no main halyard attached, whereupon the examiner told him to go back - he had failed, because his boat was not ready for sea.
Probably complete rubbish, but it concentrates the minds of candidates on prep week, when recollected.

I was told that I would fail the exam if I did not coil up ropes in the approved RYA manner. Mind you the instructor was a bit "alternative".

 

[SimonFa]

Isn't the correct answer to "RYA fog" .."I appreciate this is a nav exercise. In real life I would probable look for a safe anchorage" or similar?

When I was taught blind nav on my DS I was told to use 6 minute intervals for getting EPs, 1/10th of speed and current and also that the depth sounder was probably one if my best aids.

 

[Doug_Stormforce]

My examiner specifically said that the engine would be used during the MOB exercise since it would be unrealistic not to do so.........

On my YM we were warned that to not attempt switching on the engine during a MOB would mean a fail.

This is exactly how the exam should be run. The examiner briefs the candidates at the exam start on how the exam will be run and what is expected. Most examiners will cover a variety of "house rules" at the start to ensure candidate know the rules they are being examined by. This overcomes all of the myths and stories about previous exams that candidates have often heard of before they arrive.

Isn't the correct answer to "RYA fog" .."I appreciate this is a nav exercise. In real life I would probable look for a safe anchorage" or similar?

When I was taught blind nav on my DS I was told to use 6 minute intervals for getting EPs, 1/10th of speed and current and also that the depth sounder was probably one if my best aids.

This is pretty sound advice and is a technique that works well for most people.