Career route to skippering my own yacht

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Oceania

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Hey all,

I'm new to the forums. My dream is to be able to skipper my own 30++ foot yacht for transoceanic journeys and even living aboard 24/7 one day. I trained as an engineer but have zero sailing or naval experience; please excuse my ignorance. I am still fairly young. I have a full time job that occupies me 5 days a week but I am ready to invest the time and money in developing the skills and experience necessary to realise my aforementioned dream.

As such, I would like to ask the more experienced floor here - what should I do and in what order? Should I go to a part time skipper's course, buy a second hand, small 20 foot boat and then live aboard/boat around, hugging the coast during the weekends? Take the engine apart? Try maintaining the yacht DIY as far as possible?

Thank you for any advice.
 
You dream is realisable. There are many ways to acquire the necessary skills and experience. If you live near a sailing club, join it. If it's a dinghy sailing club they may well have a training programme. Learning to sail a dinghy is an excellent way to start. If you live near a club that has larger boats, ask to crew. People are usually willing to take you out sailing. There are umpteen residential courses available. You can get sailing holidays abroad, in warm water, where you spend the first week learning to sail dinghies, and the second week sailing in a flotilla of yachts. Great fun.
The theoretical side can be studied via local evening classes or online or correspondence courses. The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) has an excellent web site with lots of information. They also oversee all the good training courses. Google is your friend here.
Good luck, have fun.
 
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Assuming you are UK based I would suggest the following.

Find a sailing school that offers a try yachting "course" over a weekend. Ideally one that can then be upgraded by doing a couple of other weekends to a competent crew.

That should give you enough knowledge to know if you will like it and will introduce the basics.

Next step. Try and get some theoretical knowledge. The RYA Day skipper theory is a good place to start, lots of course providers.
At the same time, try and join a club, ideally a yacht club rather than a dinghy sailing club and offer to sail on others boats as crews.
Third stage is more experience. You can do this via buying something small and going out at weekends to learn by trial and error or by buying a Day Skipper course which takes 5 days.
Then just carry on pushing yourself and learning more.
You don't need any particular level of qualifications to sail in the UK but if chartering getting something like an ICC or Dayskipper is useful.

You mention living on board. I would urge caution on that. If you're working you will probably need to look smarting for work and may need a fair amount of space. That suggests a reasonable size boat whereas a smaller boat is cheaper to run/ improve whilst learning and fixing bits is cheaper.

I would therefore suggest buying something maybe mid 20 feet in length, fairly simple that can be kept somewhere fairly cheap and sail that for a while. Do your own maintenance and in a couple of years you will be more than capable of looking after a bigger, more complex boat that is suitable for longer term liveaboard use.
 
Oceania said:
Hey all,

I'm new to the forums. My dream is to be able to skipper my own 30++ foot yacht for transoceanic journeys and even living aboard 24/7 one day. I trained as an engineer but have zero sailing or naval experience; please excuse my ignorance. I am still fairly young. I have a full time job that occupies me 5 days a week but I am ready to invest the time and money in developing the skills and experience necessary to realise my aforementioned dream.

As such, I would like to ask the more experienced floor here - what should I do and in what order? Should I go to a part time skipper's course, buy a second hand, small 20 foot boat and then live aboard/boat around, hugging the coast during the weekends? Take the engine apart? Try maintaining the yacht DIY as far as possible?

Thank you for any advice.
Click to expand...

The usual forum advice is to get hold of Marty McFly, go back to the seventies and after putting down a hundred notes or so spend long evenings at adult dinghy lessons run by whatever club familiarising yourself (in a manner remeniscent of Douglas Adams) with a boat almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a cruising yacht, then try to get hold of whichever old chap at the bar is short of crew (perhaps you might wonder why) to take you out on (his choice of) weekends on a creaky old cruiser where nothing works properly and is never checked over by anyone, then after several months or ideally an introductory year of this use up your (and your family's) annual leave to charter yachts in sunny, flat seas which are both far from home and so incur substantial travel cost and incidentally offer a form of sailing far from the sort of transoceanic journeys you aspire to. After another couple of years of this, you will be able to step up to your own ship, ideally forty years old and something in the range of 23 or 24 feet on deck, which you can aspire to sail round and round in circles in Poole or Langstone. You will need to do this long enough to form a decided and inflexible view on which type of anchor is best (in either Poole or Langstone; unlikely both). At this point, you should be close to retirement and can take the next step of buying a large AWB with which to spend the next twenty years ploughing a furrow from the Hamble to Cowes as your trousers move, in steps, through ever deeper shades of pink. Finally, and now close to death, you will have aquired sufficient experience to sail past either the Needles or Nab Tower, which I am supposing is what you mean by going transoceanic- if not, it will be by then, and you can come on the internet to tell young whippersnappers how it is best done, all the time overlooking the fact that your advice might look strangely like a simple re-hash of the way you did it, in completely different circumstances and for completely different reasons at a time aeons ago when the sport and its participants were unrecognaiseable in comparison to modern-day adult entrants.

If I was giving advice, which my trousers sadly do not qualify me to do, I would suggest that a) as you are 'fairly young' (I perceive a 4 in there?) and have zero experience, that you book yourself into a RYA practical course -comp crew or Day Skipper doesn't really matter to go straight into big boats at the deep end and find out if it's really for you. If you are happy to spend (you don't say how much) you can quickly build miles and experience with, erm, paid-for milebuilders- look at things like Rubicon3, which combines milebuilding, adventure and tuition. With a Day Skipper and enthusiasm you will probably be able to get on delivery jaunts as crew- no pay, but no cost either. You'll be surprised how much you'll learn and how quickly. I'd bet you'll be skippering that small boat of yours around the coast in, say, three or four months. You won't even have got your sail principal at the dinghy club to sign you off on the first bunch of lessons before that. Never mind, though, ask old Don at the bar if he'll take you out on his MacWester saturday week. You never know your luck.
 
One of the problems is that a dream does not always equate to a life long passion. ie you might find you don't love the sea as much as you think you will. So the trick is to approach the sport slowly with out too much commitment. As said a sail training course does more than teach how to operate a sail boat. It will give you a feel for sailing and the sea which will then possibly lead you to more desire. However I have to warn you an instructors job is to teach but also to use all his skills to make it a pleasant experience. I have taken a lot of people on sailing lessons and not had any who did not love it. Of course it is not so easy when suddenly you are responsible on your own boat.
Sailing however is a sport you can learn the hard way from books and by your own mistakes. I confess that is how I started.
You can just buy a wee boat like about 20 ft and plunge into it. good luck olewill
 
TQA said:
Buy a boat, something around 18 - 22 ft.

Get someone to show you the basics.

Get a copy of Sailing for Dummies.

Go sailing - it ain't rocket science it's 99% common sense
Click to expand...


+1

In addition; KEEP IT SIMPLE. Resist temptation to complicate things.

.......and don't come back here for at least five years; you will only confuse yourself.
 
Heres my couple of twopennorths.
For most people the reality doesnt match the dream so sample some cruising yacht time first. Racers can be weird and might put you off.
Do lots of tyre kicking! Sniff around and look at lits of different boats before buying owt.
I spend l8ts of time living on a 30' boat which is fairly low and fairly skinny and its OK for one. I've had a folkboat type (27' and even lower and skinnier) which was just about doable for me as a liveaboard.
Most of the time sailing is unglamourous, a bit boring, possibly uncomfortable once the novelty wears off.
Good luck
 
bitbaltic said:
The usual forum advice is to get hold of Marty McFly, go back to the seventies and after putting down a hundred notes or so spend long evenings at adult dinghy lessons run by whatever club familiarising yourself (in a manner remeniscent of Douglas Adams) with a boat almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a cruising yacht, then try to get hold of whichever old chap at the bar is short of crew (perhaps you might wonder why) to take you out on (his choice of) weekends on a creaky old cruiser where nothing works properly and is never checked over by anyone, then after several months or ideally an introductory year of this use up your (and your family's) annual leave to charter yachts in sunny, flat seas which are both far from home and so incur substantial travel cost and incidentally offer a form of sailing far from the sort of transoceanic journeys you aspire to. After another couple of years of this, you will be able to step up to your own ship, ideally forty years old and something in the range of 23 or 24 feet on deck, which you can aspire to sail round and round in circles in Poole or Langstone. You will need to do this long enough to form a decided and inflexible view on which type of anchor is best (in either Poole or Langstone; unlikely both). At this point, you should be close to retirement and can take the next step of buying a large AWB with which to spend the next twenty years ploughing a furrow from the Hamble to Cowes as your trousers move, in steps, through ever deeper shades of pink. Finally, and now close to death, you will have aquired sufficient experience to sail past either the Needles or Nab Tower, which I am supposing is what you mean by going transoceanic- if not, it will be by then, and you can come on the internet to tell young whippersnappers how it is best done, all the time overlooking the fact that your advice might look strangely like a simple re-hash of the way you did it, in completely different circumstances and for completely different reasons at a time aeons ago when the sport and its participants were unrecognaiseable in comparison to modern-day adult entrants.

If I was giving advice, which my trousers sadly do not qualify me to do, I would suggest that a) as you are 'fairly young' (I perceive a 4 in there?) and have zero experience, that you book yourself into a RYA practical course -comp crew or Day Skipper doesn't really matter to go straight into big boats at the deep end and find out if it's really for you. If you are happy to spend (you don't say how much) you can quickly build miles and experience with, erm, paid-for milebuilders- look at things like Rubicon3, which combines milebuilding, adventure and tuition. With a Day Skipper and enthusiasm you will probably be able to get on delivery jaunts as crew- no pay, but no cost either. You'll be surprised how much you'll learn and how quickly. I'd bet you'll be skippering that small boat of yours around the coast in, say, three or four months. You won't even have got your sail principal at the dinghy club to sign you off on the first bunch of lessons before that. Never mind, though, ask old Don at the bar if he'll take you out on his MacWester saturday week. You never know your luck.
Click to expand...

Classic. Made my morning- (not withstanding being an ex-Mac owner who invites strangers to crew :-) ) Could be a pitch for a film with Robert Redford. Working title 'All is slightly damp'?
 
TQA said:
Buy a boat, something around 18 - 22 ft.

Get someone to show you the basics.

Get a copy of Sailing for Dummies.

Go sailing - it ain't rocket science it's 99% common sense
Click to expand...

+2.
As a caveat it helps a lot if you're self-reliant and practical.

Oceania: this has been touched on by others, but for the UK there is no such thing as "a career route to skippering" (unless for commercial skippering). Surprising though it may seem, you can just buy a boat and sail/drive it. And part of the reason for that is that skippers are generally responsible and learn what there is to know for its own sake rather than to pass a test.

Just try not to become another in the long line of Captain Calamities.
 
My learning steps were learn to sail a Shearwater Cat by doing it yourself with a mate, having read a learn to sail a dinghy book - https://play.google.com/store/books...O1&gclid=CMmwgprqkM8CFcTIcgod2TIFGg&gclsrc=ds. Go with your patrner (Jane in my case) on a flotilla holiday in Greece. Then bareboat charter anywhere in the Med or Caribbean, Jane and I did that for over 20 years. Then buy a yacht and go long distance sailing. For all yacht maintenance buy 'Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual' by Nigel Calder then buy all the spares for everything and use the exploded diagrams.
 
I think that it's completely wrong to advise someone with no boating experience to go out and buy a boat. Surely it's better to do some sailing first, at least to see if the reality of sailing approaches the dream. If it does, then by all means, go for it.
 
Are you looking for a career, or do you just want to sail your own boat for fun?

Former - take your STCW's and go to work on large yachts, then pick up your OOW ticket and perhaps Master3000. You can then buy a large vessel with the wheelbarrows of cash you will have accumulated and run her as a business or whatever dream it is you have.

Latter - just buy a boat and potter around. You can pick up a good boat, which will take you offshore, for less than £10k. Learn as you go.
 
bitbaltic said:
The usual forum advice is to get hold of Marty McFly, go back to the seventies and after putting down a hundred notes or so spend long evenings at adult dinghy lessons run by whatever club familiarising yourself (in a manner remeniscent of Douglas Adams) with a boat almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a cruising yacht, then try to get hold of whichever old chap at the bar is short of crew (perhaps you might wonder why) to take you out on (his choice of) weekends on a creaky old cruiser where nothing works properly and is never checked over by anyone, then after several months or ideally an introductory year of this use up your (and your family's) annual leave to charter yachts in sunny, flat seas which are both far from home and so incur substantial travel cost and incidentally offer a form of sailing far from the sort of transoceanic journeys you aspire to. After another couple of years of this, you will be able to step up to your own ship, ideally forty years old and something in the range of 23 or 24 feet on deck, which you can aspire to sail round and round in circles in Poole or Langstone. You will need to do this long enough to form a decided and inflexible view on which type of anchor is best (in either Poole or Langstone; unlikely both). At this point, you should be close to retirement and can take the next step of buying a large AWB with which to spend the next twenty years ploughing a furrow from the Hamble to Cowes as your trousers move, in steps, through ever deeper shades of pink. Finally, and now close to death, you will have aquired sufficient experience to sail past either the Needles or Nab Tower, which I am supposing is what you mean by going transoceanic- if not, it will be by then, and you can come on the internet to tell young whippersnappers how it is best done, all the time overlooking the fact that your advice might look strangely like a simple re-hash of the way you did it, in completely different circumstances and for completely different reasons at a time aeons ago when the sport and its participants were unrecognaiseable in comparison to modern-day adult entrants.

If I was giving advice, which my trousers sadly do not qualify me to do, I would suggest that a) as you are 'fairly young' (I perceive a 4 in there?) and have zero experience, that you book yourself into a RYA practical course -comp crew or Day Skipper doesn't really matter to go straight into big boats at the deep end and find out if it's really for you. If you are happy to spend (you don't say how much) you can quickly build miles and experience with, erm, paid-for milebuilders- look at things like Rubicon3, which combines milebuilding, adventure and tuition. With a Day Skipper and enthusiasm you will probably be able to get on delivery jaunts as crew- no pay, but no cost either. You'll be surprised how much you'll learn and how quickly. I'd bet you'll be skippering that small boat of yours around the coast in, say, three or four months. You won't even have got your sail principal at the dinghy club to sign you off on the first bunch of lessons before that. Never mind, though, ask old Don at the bar if he'll take you out on his MacWester saturday week. You never know your luck.
Click to expand...

Made my day!:encouragement:
 
bitbaltic said:
The usual forum advice is to get hold of Marty McFly, go back to the seventies and after putting down a hundred notes or so spend long evenings at adult dinghy lessons run by whatever club familiarising yourself (in a manner remeniscent of Douglas Adams) with a boat almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a cruising yacht, then try to get hold of whichever old chap at the bar is short of crew (perhaps you might wonder why) to take you out on (his choice of) weekends on a creaky old cruiser where nothing works properly and is never checked over by anyone, then after several months or ideally an introductory year of this use up your (and your family's) annual leave to charter yachts in sunny, flat seas which are both far from home and so incur substantial travel cost and incidentally offer a form of sailing far from the sort of transoceanic journeys you aspire to. After another couple of years of this, you will be able to step up to your own ship, ideally forty years old and something in the range of 23 or 24 feet on deck, which you can aspire to sail round and round in circles in Poole or Langstone. You will need to do this long enough to form a decided and inflexible view on which type of anchor is best (in either Poole or Langstone; unlikely both). At this point, you should be close to retirement and can take the next step of buying a large AWB with which to spend the next twenty years ploughing a furrow from the Hamble to Cowes as your trousers move, in steps, through ever deeper shades of pink. Finally, and now close to death, you will have aquired sufficient experience to sail past either the Needles or Nab Tower, which I am supposing is what you mean by going transoceanic- if not, it will be by then, and you can come on the internet to tell young whippersnappers how it is best done, all the time overlooking the fact that your advice might look strangely like a simple re-hash of the way you did it, in completely different circumstances and for completely different reasons at a time aeons ago when the sport and its participants were unrecognaiseable in comparison to modern-day adult entrants.

If I was giving advice, which my trousers sadly do not qualify me to do, I would suggest that a) as you are 'fairly young' (I perceive a 4 in there?) and have zero experience, that you book yourself into a RYA practical course -comp crew or Day Skipper doesn't really matter to go straight into big boats at the deep end and find out if it's really for you. If you are happy to spend (you don't say how much) you can quickly build miles and experience with, erm, paid-for milebuilders- look at things like Rubicon3, which combines milebuilding, adventure and tuition. With a Day Skipper and enthusiasm you will probably be able to get on delivery jaunts as crew- no pay, but no cost either. You'll be surprised how much you'll learn and how quickly. I'd bet you'll be skippering that small boat of yours around the coast in, say, three or four months. You won't even have got your sail principal at the dinghy club to sign you off on the first bunch of lessons before that. Never mind, though, ask old Don at the bar if he'll take you out on his MacWester saturday week. You never know your luck.
Click to expand...
Haven't seen such a jaundiced view for ages. This,Oceania, is how you will feel after your first 36-hour delivery trip, standing watches 3-hours-on-3-hours-off, 24/7:)
But seriously, I would concur with the advice generally given in the first two replies, which recommend a sensible path of acquiring training and building miles (keep a personal logbook,obtainable from RYA, whose website will provide plenty of information on the training path). Your engineering background would probably incline you in this direction, anyway.
Steer well clear of the idea of just buying a boat and learning by trial and error. Also, crewing on racing oats is not very instructive.
Someone earlier mentioned courses involving one week training on dinghies and second week on a cruising boat; if by any chance you speak French, you can do this with Les Glenans; www.glenans.asso.fr/en/
 
Look around locally for opportunities to get out on the water, both dinghy and yacht. I've never been seasick in a dinghy - it's too frenetic to have time - but gave a right royal display of mal-de-mer on a large training vessel! I still enjoyed the trip, though. I have a friend who wanted to crew for me having sailed a couple of times under benign conditions, but a week before we were due to get afloat he went out in choppy conditions on another boat and said he spent the whole day wishing he were dead.

Dinghies teach you to sail better and quicker as they reveal all your failings (as you swim back to the boat).

If you can find people you get on wth who will take you as a passenger and explain what they are doing, it will stand you in good stead to absorb the teaching on both practical and theory courses as you can put the subject matter into context. Once you get to the point that the skipper doesn't feel the need to dictate every detail of every manouvre when yuo're at the helm, you're about ready to consider your own boat.

Rob.
 
The thing i love about this sort of thread is that the OP doesn't ever return to see the many pearls of wisdom anyway!
 
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