Day Skipper Practical Sail, Solent Based - suggestions/recommendations please...

Boltrope

Boltrope

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Nearing the end of her Theory course and taking the exams soon, SWMBO is looking for a Solent-based sailing school to sign up for her DS Practical Sail, intending to do it in the five day format rather than at the weekends, hopefully some time in April.
Schools suggested so far include Nomad, Southern, Ocean Adventure and Solent Boat Training.
Can anyone recommend any of these schools - they are unknown to me - and/or recommend any others, from experience?
Prices seem to vary between £399 and £625 with no clear indicator as to what you get - or don't get - for your money.
We'd be most grateful for any advice the panel could give :D
 
Years asgo I used Hamble School of Yachting. My sister also used them recently. Both very happy.

I would look very carefully at those charging £399. Is food / mooring included in that?
 
I would also ask how many students there will be. I just paid extra with ru sailing in Portugal to do coastal skipper with just 3 students. Well worth it.
 
Also worth checking what course the other students are taking.
Ok to mix Comp Crew and Day Skipper but I wouldn't want to do Day Skipper if others were taking YM Coastal.
 
Another question to ask might be what courses the other students are doing. Some places will try to make out that mixing up comp crew, dayskipper and yacht master prep candidates is a good thing. I don't agree. If everyone is doing dayskipper, the Instructor only has to explain each task initially once and everyone learns about a set task from observing their fellow students' attempts and listening to the instructor's feedback. If the Instructor has to explain tasks for students following other syllabuses, take the time to observe them and give them feedback, that might be educational, but probably not as directly relevant to passing dayskipper as the dayskipper tasks.

[edit: darn. Beaten to it by Talulah]
 
Talulah said:
Also worth checking what course the other students are taking.
Ok to mix Comp Crew and Day Skipper but I wouldn't want to do Day Skipper if others were taking YM Coastal.
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Yes I did my dayskipper somewhere that shall remain nameless. 3 weekends, different instructors, different courses being taught. It was terrible!!

As I mentioned above I then did coastal with 2 others doing coastal at rusailing and it was brilliant!
 
Another factor...
Whilst people book up on sailing courses and they think the date is set some sailing schools will cancel fairly late in the day if there are insufficient numbers.
An alternative date may then be offered.
So it's worth checking before booking what their stance is on this.
I suspect more of a problem on mid-week courses.
 
Another factor...
Whilst people book up on sailing courses and they think the date is set some sailing schools will cancel fairly late in the day if there are insufficient numbers.
An alternative date may then be offered.
So it's worth checking before booking what their stance is on this.
I suspect more of a problem on mid-week courses.
 
laika said:
Another question to ask might be what courses the other students are doing. Some places will try to make out that mixing up comp crew, dayskipper and yacht master prep candidates is a good thing. I don't agree. If everyone is doing dayskipper, the Instructor only has to explain each task initially once and everyone learns about a set task from observing their fellow students' attempts and listening to the instructor's feedback. If the Instructor has to explain tasks for students following other syllabuses, take the time to observe them and give them feedback, that might be educational, but probably not as directly relevant to passing dayskipper as the dayskipper tasks.
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Oh I don't know I did my Day Skipper with Yachtmaster Offshore candidates and found it very, very informative especially the exam if you plan to go that far. It may depend on the experience of the potential Day Skipper.
 
Camelia said:
Oh I don't know I did my Day Skipper with Yachtmaster Offshore candidates and found it very, very informative especially the exam if you plan to go that far. It may depend on the experience of the potential Day Skipper.
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As you say, I think it depends on the experience of the dayskipper candidate. For experienced sailors just doing box ticking then yes, it would probably be very positive. Not so much for people who do need tuition/practice in doing dayskipper stuff.

You don't want to be the YM prep week guy on a course with 3 dayskippers and a comp crew though. DAMHIKT.
 
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I did my Comp crew and Coastal skipper with Haslar Sea School. Both times had John Cole as the instructor and he was excellent, teaching everything the proper way and proving the reasons why that's the proper way. I did my Day Skipper elsewhere (not Solent) and had an entirely different experience with an instructor who liked racing and concentrated less on the boat handling although we had a great week of sailing.
You may want to specify more about how you'd like the course to go. Is this to ensure confident, calm boat handling? Is it to just get the course completed, or is it to have a fun week sailing while getting a cert? I've read reviews on here of some other Solent schools where the course was doubtless more fun than the one I did at Haslar, but the training wasn't necessarily as good.
 
I did DS with Southern a few years ago. Found it to be good comprehensive down-to-earth instruction in all the essentials. All of us were treated equally, whether they had their own lovely yacht or, like me, boatless.
I particularly liked...maybe it was our instructor...that one night (it was around Easter and dark)...a wind sprang up and the instructor decided after our meal that a night sail across to the IoW and back was in order.Good stuff.
 
trthebees said:
I did DS with Southern a few years ago. Found it to be good comprehensive down-to-earth instruction in all the essentials. All of us were treated equally, whether they had their own lovely yacht or, like me, boatless.
I particularly liked...maybe it was our instructor...that one night (it was around Easter and dark)...a wind sprang up and the instructor decided after our meal that a night sail across to the IoW and back was in order.Good stuff.
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I did my YM Offshore with Southern more years ago than I care to remember, and it was really, really good. I did a prep weekend then the exam on the Monday. It was so long ago I thought it was irrelevant to the OP. But it sounds as if they still have the same approach. Just remembered, it was in the early days of Decca!!!! I spent the afternoon practicing MOB, while Jack Goode read the instructions for his new Decca, occasionally his head would appear through the hatch with some pithy comment, and I would do it again.

Told you it was a long time ago!
 
Can highly recommend Ricky Chalmers - Debanessa sailing School - <RickyChalmers@Gmail.com> think he's based at Ocean Village. V. easy to get on with Aussie/Kiwi (can't remember which!) hired him for a day for a refresher on own boat.

But he may be in Caribbean at the moment.
 
+1 for Southern......though it was quite a few years ago too.......no frills but no calamities either...just good solid instruction!
 
skip50 said:
Just remembered, it was in the early days of Decca!!!! I spent the afternoon practicing MOB, while Jack Goode read the instructions for his new Decca.
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Decca was used in WWII, so that was a long time ago! It was opened up for civilian use in 1974, so you were probably training in 1975/6. I can remember getting Decca on my father's boat - it made position finding a lot easier than compass bearings or listening to the RDF!
 
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