Coastal Skipper Course Completion or DOT Certificate of Competence?

oldrascal

oldrascal

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It may be something to do with having been to a public school but the filthy weather makes me want to do something now about improving my sailing skills and taking the next step up the qualification ladder with a Coastal Skipper course (I have the Yachtmaster/Coastal Skipper theory qualifiaction already).

As there are some good Boat Show discounts being offered by the sailing schools, I need to make a decision fast but I'm confused (easily done these days). Is the extra cost and effort of the 7-day Certificate of Competence course worth shooting for over the 5-day Course Completion Certificate?

Sunsail (bless) only recommend the 7-day course but it seems that the 2 courses have different functions, seemingly dependent upon future needs. Other schools think differently.

As I have no intention of doing anything professionally in the marine industry and just want to polish up my night/navigations skills, which one fits the bill better?
 
Re: Coastal Skipper Course Completion or DOT Certificate of Competence

The Coastal skipper course is a 5 day course. At the end of this you get a course completion certificate (assuming the instructor thinks you're good enough)

After that you can take an exam that could last up to a weekend. (Mine took about 7 hours and was over on the friday night). This is the DOT official test.

Personally I would recommend taking the exam, passing it is a huge confidence boost and if you want to charter a boat later an exam pass has much more weight than the course completion certificate.
 
Re: Coastal Skipper Course Completion or DOT Certificate of Competence

May I correct a couple of minor misconceptions from you, and timeandtide.
The exams you take are not "DOT official tests". They are RYA examinations which are recognised by the MCA.
For timeandtide - your shore based theory course completion certificate is not a qualification. It does not qualify you to do anything.
Full details are available in the RYA Log Books, G.15 for sail and G.18 for power, available directly from the RYA, or from many nautical bookshops.
A coastal skipper practical course is normally 5 days spent on board a yacht with a YM Instructor. You should get at least one 24 hour period as skipper under instruction.
 
You can always sign up for the 5 day course and then think about the exam at a later date.

You'll get the instruction you need from the 5 day course but passing the exam would boost your confidence & give you more options (for instance our insurance covers MCA qualified CS's, not RYA course completed CS's). A good examiner will also give some instruction/pointers/share some experience with you during the exam. Splitting the two would give you time inbetween to gain more experience of what you've just learned before being tested. You can adjust that time to suit you.

I wouldn't be pressurised by boat show prices. The price schools offer there are what they're willing to take during the rest of the year in general.

Good luck
 
You give no indication of your experience and in what capacity.

Advice I was given and that I would now endorse.

Do the theory - which you have.

Do Dayskipper which gives you the ICC a qualification that is internationally recognised and will enable you to charter. In many other countries the ICC is a rigorous exam! Do not skip DS as it concentrates a fair amount on boat handling.

Do CS if you have completed the requirements 1250mls or YM if you have 2500mls.

Both CS and YM are more about taking command of a boat and being responsible for the crew. I have crewed on some YM exams where it was obvious that all the miles were gained on others boats and as crew.

Above are generalisations but others may add a bit to give you a better overall picture.

Good Luck.
 
sound advice re not skipping DS

I assume that you have this already as you indicate 'the next step on the ladder'

The suggested pre-requisite for the CS practical course is 300Nm, 15 days at sea (2 as skipper) 8 Night Hrs

For MCA CS - 800Nm, 30 days at sea (2 as skipper) 12 Night Hrs

The difference between the two above starts to suggest the difference in skills & experience required for each

For MCA YM (you don't need to know this) - 2500Nm, 50days at sea 5x60Nm passages, 2 as skipper, 2 overnight.
 
I hope this helps,

Several years ago I did comp crew with my future wife, sis & b-inlaw to see if we liked sailing. We did a med course with a boat to ourselves and it was a great experience.

We all then did a similar thing and did day skipper split over several longweekends, theory and practical. My wife and I did some bare boat charters here and in Oz to get some experience.

A couple of years ago we did coastal/YM theory and then 7 day practical (we wanted the sailing time) but not RYA exam. There seem to be some misnomers about what these courses do.

For the C/YM theory I had to pass an exam under exam conditions to get the theory course completion certificate. You should have to do more than turn up and doodle at the back of a classroom (radio ticket). Did I spend a week learning about navigation, colregs etc and prove it had gone in, yes. Have I put it on the wall with my degree and professional qualifications, er no.

Coastal skipper course we chose to go to the channel islands to do some longer offshore passages, interesting tidal stuff and interesting pilotage. We were given the option of spending a week around the solent so we could take an exam knowing for blind nav purposes where all the buoyage and hazards . In the end we decided that it wasn't what we wanted to get out of it. I demonstrated I could do everything on the syllabus, I skippered an offshore passages of more than 60nm on a 40ft yacht and did an 7 hour trip from cherbourg to Guernsey in rough (rather rough according to Guernsey radio) F6-7. Not everyone got their 'ticket'. Do I think that I have now learnt to sail up to coastal skipper level, well yes pretty much. I know what we did that week (including a rudder failure in poole harbour). In the end I think, only you really know what your experience is. If you need the bit of paper to prove to yourself that you have that experience then its probably worthless. Personally I think that includes spending a week crawling every creek in the solent to get a dot qualification, if you are going to spend your time dodging container ships or sail somewhere really challenging (and Im not necessarily referring to the channel islands) once you have your 'ticket'

No link but I did day skipper and coastal with ondeck and found them to be a quality bunch, even if their food provisions were a bit too lidl for our taste.

do doubt I will now get flamed, if it helps I have bought a small MAB and am now spending my apprenticship dodging east coast mud with hanked on sails and hands still ingrained with poisonous blue paint.

Oh and I would never call a pan pan if the outboard packed up, I would pluck withies from the marina entrance channel as we sailed under the no.3 up the marina channel. I would bend a coracle out of the No 2 and said withies before paddling/towing the boat in the berth.
 
You could try http://www.allabroad.net/ they are in Gibralta so its TIDAL and you get some interesting sailing with wind virtually guaranteed .. We had a great 2 weeks .. Cheap flight as well .. They are a walk from the airport .. Hope to get back later this year to do Coastal and SWMBO wants to do Day Skipper Practical .. Well worth a look .. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I would say definitely go for the exam. In my experience, charter companies etc. respect it far more than the course completion certificate.

As the exam usually includes a mixture of YM & CS candidates, it will also give you a useful insight into what you'll have to do for your YM exam when you decide to do that.

You don't have to spend seven days to sit the CS practical exam, many schools will do it in five days in parallel with the YM prep. I was told that course completion cert plus exam was a Solent area practice. Try contacting a few schools in various sailing areas to see what they say.
 
If you do a course, the mileage qualification for CS drops to 400. I did one last Septemver. I wasn't sure (having no formal quals) what level I would be, and basically they said "fine, the instructor will sort it out". The crew was 2 Day skipper candidates, myself and aguy who did his YM exam. I finished up with CS, but found the week absolutely brilliant. As far as boat handling skills were concerned I was pretty much fine but still learned a few bits. Learned loads on the nav side, but confirmed I was safe.
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

With some many knowledgeable posters here, may I ask if you know of CS or YM practical tests, sail OR motor, being taken single-handed?
I can't find a sailing school or examiner who hasn't dismissed that as being 'undercrewed'.
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

Part of the skill of being a skipper is managing your crew. Both CS and YM aren't just about sailing, they're about being a skipper.
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

I had my YM exam postponed because the other candidates pulled out meaning that there was no crew.

Crew management is a huge part of the exam. Too many accidents occur because otherwise competent yachtsmen can't manage their crew. I believe there is a similar approach to emphasise bridge management techniques for commercial mariners.
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

I obviously forgot to put in the rest of my sailing experience which, quite rightly, has an impact on the next step.

So here goes: Day Skipper (Tidal); ICC; VHF Short Range; YM/CS (Shore Based); 1st Aid; 900 miles logged as skipper of a 37 foot Beneteau, mostly in the Solent but with a week's charter as Skipper out of Athens on an Oceanis 411.

That last charter gave me a couple of F7 blows and a very, very wild electrical storm with some heroic wave height which was...er...interesting.

Anyhow, the various schools that I have approached seem to indicate that the syllabus for the Coastal Skipper Course Completion Certificate is quite different from that where an exam and Certificate of Competence is the goal.

For example, in the first instance assuming a Solent based school, there would be much more emphasis on passage-making with possible destinations such as France or Weymouth included. OnDeck preferred this option.

The Certificate of Competence would be much more concentrated locally in the Solent, with more emphasis on night-sailing, 'blind' sailing and entry into difficult harbours under sail for example.

I am aware of All Abroad in Gibraltar and was quite keen but was 'warned-off' by a salesman at Sunsail who indicated that the sailing was not challenging enough to be of any real use. Well, he would, wouldn't he.

A last comment with regard to charter operators preferring a full Certificate of Competence. I am unaware of any charterers outside the UK who do not accept the ICC and VHF qualifications or, at worst, a sailing CV. That said, I have not chartered in the UK.
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

Hi TimeAndTide,

In the end it depends which appeals to you more. I certainly don't regret doing the exam when I had the same choice myself a few years ago. I've also sailed with crew with the CS course completion cert and been genuinely shocked with the lack of experience, so maybe I retain a little prejudice.

With 900m skippering experience you shouldn't find it difficult to plan & execute a trip to Weymouth & back on your own boat in reasonable weather. There's a couple of tidal gates, but if you pick your time you could go close to neaps anyway. A trip to Cherbourg and back would be more experience, but maybe you could do that a couple of times on somebody else's boat before doing it yourself.

My opinion on chartering came from direct feedback from a UK charter company.
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

Allabroad are a good school. (full stop). I used to work for them. I moved on and set up our own school here in Lagos on the Atlantic. The main reasons were that I found I couldn't teach a full tidal syllabus in Gibraltar. The straits have a good tidal flow which is great for Course to Steer and Ep's perhaps but the marina's have no flow, max. tide is <1.0m, no mooring buoys or rivers around and therefore not that great if you're planning to sail mainly in tidal waters. They come here on a two week mileage building trip as part of their fastrack. I had assumed you doing a course in the UK. If you fancy somewhere different, sunny and tidal then we'd welcome an enquiry.

In answer to some other posts, I do not know of any single handed exams either. We had a great one just before the ARC - Henry from yacht Ariel (24' folk boat in the arc and Yachting Monthly this month) passed his YM through us with just one crew. And it wasn't me!

Oh, and by the way - we would never, ever cancel a course whatever the reason. We can always find crew from our staff and are happy to run just one student if needs be from Start Yachting to YM prep. We took a guy recently who'd suffered the same from another UK school when his Spinnaker course collapsed due to lack of intake.

Rob
 
Re: Certificate of Competence

I'm not sure that anyone has answered your question directly - let me try. I have almost identical qualifications and similar experience to you. Last year I chose to get an instructor to come aboard our boat and give us instruction as a crew. This gave us 2 competent crew tickets and 2 coastal skipper course completions.

I went this route because we are not intending to charter in the near future and we wanted to learn about getting the best out of the boat such that we are confident to take it to places requiring challenging navigation and pilotage. For me it's about education and not stickers in the logbook.
 
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