Day skipper course

Re: Depends on what your Navs like

My 13 year old daughter can driver a car - because I showed her how to drive. Think she's a "safe" driver, but would not let her on the road without a driving licence.

Which brings me to the point: why does the RYA think that a compulsary liscence is a bad thing? I know that a driving license does not keep ALL idiots off the road, but I have as yet to meet the first person in favour of abolishing it.

<hr width=100% size=1>Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
 
Re: Depends on what your Navs like

Bloody hell Yanita, you're opening a can of worms here!

I think the general view is that loads of people drive cars, the speeds are fast, the room to manoeuvre is small and if you have an accident you could endanger other peoples' lives.

Therefore there should be a basic test of competency. There's still hundreds of people killed on the roads every year despite this test.

Fewer people drive pleasure boats, the speeds are smaller, the room to manoeuvre is larger, and accidents tend to affect the only the crew involved in general.

In addition, the UK has an apparently lower level of leisure sailing accidents than countries that have compulsory examination of leisure sailors.

Compulsory examinations would add another layer of beaurocracy that we would have to pay for.

In this country, voluntary training seems to work. If it's not broken then don't fix it!

<hr width=100% size=1>It could have been worse - it could have been me.
 
Shakey
The general brief from the RYA and the one that instructors are supposed to pass on to the students, is that you do not fail a Day Skipper course. The course is modular and therefore you may not complete all of the modules in the given time. You may then come back for a weekend or whatever and finish the incomplete module(s).

The RYA suggested pre course experience for Day Skipper practical is 5 days, 100 miles and 4 night hours, assumed knowledge is Basic Navigation and sailng ability.

Taking the definition from the instructors handbook:

"The suggested minimum pre-course experience is that which would be gained on the Competent Crew course."

"The navigation ability should be that required to draw an EP, have a reasonable idea of tidal heights and tidal streams, basic chartwork and seamanship. The Day Skipper shorebased training obviously gives ideal training."

" Sailing ability can be defined as being able to sail a boat arond a triangular course one leg of which is to windward. Gybing shuld not be a surprise."

Unfortunately many schools conveniently forget this when they are taking the bookings and people with just a little dinghy experience when they were a child arrive expecting a day skipper ticket, and they do expect it.

In my opinion if you are going to take up sailing you should want to do it properly and not be like "the other idiots" out there without a clue. Taking the Day Skipper practical is a an excellent course and you wil learn loads, but to get the most from it you do need the basic theory knowledge.

The Day Skipper theory course is an excellent fun way of gaining this knowledge, not the only way but I do believe it is the best and possibly the easiest way.

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Re: Depends on what your Navs like

joeirish implied in his post that he did not have the theoretical knowledge. your professional skippers presumably knew how to fix a position and when to give way.

the fact that they didn't have any certificates means one has to take their knowledge on trust whereas if they'd been qualified one could be certain of a minimum level of knowledge. i'm not denying that there are unqualified people out there who are far better than some yachtmasters but if you don't know them, how do you tell the good guys from the bulls*****s?

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Re: Depends on what your Navs like

Qualifications are no substitute for capability as we all know.

However, if these guys are operating on UK flagged vessels, they are doing it outside the manning requirements of the MCA.

Should any problem/incident/accident occur, (1) They would have an additional legal problem, & (2) more importantly, the vessel owner would be unlikely to have any insurance cover (insurance companies would love an excuse to exclude).(3)The authorities in the country with local jurisdiction could also become difficult.

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There seems to be a misunderstanding here about exams. As a former Yachtmaster Examiner I can assure you that the only examinations in the RYA Training Scheme are those conducted by an RYA Examiner i.e. the Coastal Skipper or Yachtmaster Offshore Practical Examinations. Yachtmaster Ocean is a whole different kettle of fish.
At the end of each course if you have done all that is necessary you will be awarded a 'certificate of successful course completion'. To obtain these on a shore based theory course you must attend the course and pass the final assessment papers. You should also have convinced your tutor during the course by doing all the RYA exercises to his satisfaction. Most of them are done as homework between classes and include Navigation, Rule of the Road, Meteorology, Pilotage etc., etc., even at Day Skipper Level. This year's course also includes a DVD with electronic chart plotter exercises.
Nobody 'passes' or 'fails' a course, you are either awarded the certificate or not as the case may be.
There are slightly different rules for a correspondence course which can be obtained from the school offering it.
Might I suggest that before you do anything you obtain a copy of the RYA Log Book G.15 (Sail) or G.18(Motor) which is not only your personal log book, but also contains the various syllabi as well as the conditions necessary before you take an exam. Evidence of course attendance is not necessary to take a CS or YM exam, indeed over the years I examined many candidates who had learned their knowledge by other means quite successfully, usually by gaining much experience.


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I passed Day Skipper Practical without attending the Theory Course, but I had crewed yachts for seven years before taking the course and had read:-
Gerry Smith: Coastal Navigation
(I rate this as better for basic chartwork than Langley-Price & Ouvray or Cunliffe)
"A Seaman's Guide to the Rule of the Road" (the official Royal Navy teach- yourself book)
and I had a rudimentary grasp of weather.

In the five days of a Day Skipper Practical Course an instructor can fill in some gaps in your knowledge. But if you turn up on day one never having seen a chart before; or thinking that a North Cardinal is the Arch-Bishop of Liverpool; or unable to trim a sail... then you're on track to fail.

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Re: Depends on what your Navs like

If the question is whether someone should know some Nav and IRPCS theory before they attend a Day Skipper Practical course then the answer is a resounding YES!

One of the biggest problems instructors have with the DS practical course is someone attending who doesn't know how to plot a course to steer, find a tidal height or plot an EP and who has scant knowledge of the IRPCS etc etc.

How you acheive that is up to you. If you need the discipline of attending and encouragement of others on a night school course fine. If you can acheive the same out of a book - fine. If you think you already know enough, excellent.

If you turn up on your DS practical without the theory reasonably firmly embedded in your head, you will not get half as much out of the course. It is a practical course after all, and your time will be better spent taking turns in practical manoevers and pilotage, than trying to mug up sounds and lights or some other aspect of theory which you can so easily do in advance.

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If you really want to sail, get a lot. not a little, dinghy experience. Bar far the best way.

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