Day Skipper Correspondence Course

[soperp]

Hi,

I am looking for a correspondence course to do Day Skipper. I read this thread: Day Skipper Correspondence with interest, and have looked at all the referenced sites - they all look good.

However, I have found a course at Centaur Sailing which offers the option of running the course for half price, but with no access to tutor support.

I was wondering if anybody has any experience of this company, or the course?

My thought was that I know a number of experienced sailors who I could turn to if I needed help - a couple of them have offered to teach me the theory, but I would rather learn through an accredited course, and get the RYA certificate at the end of it.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Blue5]

I have used them and found them very good. Unless you are super confident if you dont have the full support you will never know if you are making mistakes.

 

[Carolwildbird]

I have done day skipper, coastal/yachtmaster theory and ocean theory with Centaur sailing, as well as VHF. I can highly recommend them. Rod Emmer is great. Personally I really appreciated the hands on support option. Rod goes out of his way to help with problems of understanding, and returns stuff very promptly. If you get stuck you can call him and chat about it.

The course is structured so there are lots of student-marked questions which you can do and check your answers. Then instructor marked questions which you send back to Rod for marking. On the "no support" option, you can of course check your understanding through the student marked questions, so if you are honest and diligent then you could still easily do the course without support.

Warning.. if you do ALL the questions and study all the stuff thoroughly it will take you the equivalent of at least two weeks F/T! But it is very thorough - having been sailing with people who have done either night school or intensive weeks, my impression was that they had not covered stuff in anywhere near the depth that I had on Rod's course- particularly in the area of electronic chartplotting (where you have the chartplotter software on your computer to play with, and all chart work is done both on paper charts and the electronic plotter).

That's my two pennyworth! It depends on your prior level of knowledge and confidence, I guess. If you just want the ticket and have a good grounding, and are willing to put in the work and be honest with your self, then the no-support option would be fine.

 

[gjgm]

I went striaght to YM.. its not that much more than DS anyway. BUT.. I would say apart from the parot fashion learning, the most useful part of it is the actual participation of others, and hearing other peoples experiences. And then the social side of it is a hoot too!
Oherwise, just read some books, Id say.

 

[soperp]

Thanks for the replies - very useful stuff!

Those that have used Centaur, which looks like a good bet supported or un-supported - what sort of volume of instructor marked questions are there? I was thinking I could ask one or two of my experienced sailor friends to look at them for me - or would would the volume make that a big ask!?

Thanks

 

[Carolwildbird]

If I recall, there are typically three or four instructor-marked questions per module, but it varies, depending on the subject. Some of them- especially in the chartwork, are checking the accuracy of your plotting as well as your understanding of the principles, so I'm not sure that anyone other than the person setting the question, would know whether it was good enough (accuracy wise) to pass RYA standards. There are of course, lots more student marked questions where you get the answer as well, so you can check yourself on these ones.