Hero to Zero!

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rhinorhino

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Am I alone in thinking the Zero to Hero YM courses are deeply alarming.
They seem to excel as a way for cash rich / time poor people to get a bit of paper that has become a fetish in the industry.
Fine if they are valued on that basis but as a professional qualification this approach seems deeply suspect.
The quote in the article, "you get the exam then you learn to sail", sums this approach up and seems worrying. Would you think that a YM was qualified or that they were a learner (yes, we all never stop learning, but I mean a raw learner)?
The result of these courses is to devalue the qualification.
The tragic fate of a yacht on a Biscay lee shore earlier this year seems to me an indication of where this all leads. The MAIB report identifies several aspects of the accident but reading between the lines the message seesm to be that an under-qulified skipper doing the job on the cheap in an ill-equipped boat did not have the experiance to stay put or the confidence to push on.

<hr width=100% size=1><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by rhinorhino on 14/09/2004 09:41 (server time).</FONT></P>
 
One thing I read was the recommendation for a SSB radio because they did not understand the local weather forecasts.

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Re: Yachtmaster - great name

It's a fabulous title, and that's perhaps THE reason why it's a must-have. I don't disagree that the z-h courses seem to short circuit some issues of experience, and that some YM's are therefore not as masterful of a yacht as one might hope.

But the syllabus is for the RYA to set, i suppose. Ym's would be more masterful if frexample you need to show (say) five consecutive seasons during each of which you have been active perhaps on four different yachts with at least three different rigs and done night-time tidal courses during all four seasons under the watchfull eye of not less than two other YM's and have exoperienced at least three weeks of conditions of F7 or above and etc etc



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Re: Yachtmaster - great name

and all that before learning the art of tacking up untackable channels. Surviving a few shipwrecks and removing the odd appendix at sea would add a certain credibility to the Commercial Endorsement as well.

<hr width=100% size=1>Think I'll draw some little rabbits on my head, from a distance they might be mistaken for hairs.
 
Where can I see a copy of the report?

I response to the main thrust of your post, where ever there are qualifications there will be "fast track" courses unless there is a requirement built in to spread the time during which experiance is acquired.

A similar problem seems to exist within the IT industry where a qualification that initially demonstrated experiance with a product and required say 6 exams and therefore 6 courses gets condenced down to 3 crammer courses and then to one! at which point employers start asking the value of having the qualification and start asking for demonstration of practical experiance.

I think that there is a lack of common sence when discussing/requireing a qualification, in an ideal world people would have both. The qualification would reflect the experiance. Until thoes who require people to have a qualification understand that there is more to life than a piece of paper the qualification will continue to be devalued by incidents like this, and perhaps rightly so!

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Re: Yachtmaster - great name

Fair comment...
But there must be a fair balance between accessability and experiance?
The flaw in the system seems to spring from a lack of clarity as to what YM is for. A lesuire qualification which should be accessable (a low level of experiance) or a proffessional qualification (where the lives of crew and paying passengers may depend on it requiring much more experiance)

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Hero to Zero not mentioned tho?

Um the skipper was 24 years old, which is plenty old enough to have a lot of experience, and of course any age is young enough to have none at all. The text doesn't say if he achieved YM by z-h : i dunno if he did, did he?

Either way, he needed storm sails, lots more kit, para anchor even ...or, since the thing is being done on a tight commercial basis, choose better weather, like not a blimmin F7 rising F9-10. YM easily covers finding wx, and even know-nowts can look at forecasts in pictures, find others in the marina, text mates or headoffice, or look at internet to find general outlook that it's gonna be bad to very bad. Waiting even 24 hours would have made a big difference.

One possible question is, would that same skipper have stayed in port if he'd had (say) five years more experience? I'm not at all sure he wd have.

Ultimately, praps some really valuable experience is gained by cocking things up and getting away with it. Very sadly, in this case, he didn't.

I don't (yet) see this as a reason to slate z-h courses neccessarily?


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Re: Hero to Zero not mentioned tho?

tend to agree. Apparently most of the "old men" of the Cape Horners were in their twenties. Much experience is gained by making mistakes but being lucky enough to get away with it.

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I dont see how anyone can be anything other than better off by doing such a course. You are, after all , learning from the condensed experience of others. Thats what learning is all about.

After all, we allow people to drive cars without any great experience but just training, and the same with bikes. Inevitably, there are accidents but that doesnt invalidate the training. After all, there are something like 2 ships sinking per day round the world, and most of them with professional masters who have to have lots of experience.

The individual concerned here didnt need to have gone through the practical experience of an F9 to know that he needed a storm sail. He could have learned that from YM. Undoubtedly did hear it on his course. But for some reason didnt do it.

In a working life of giving responsibility for projects to people, I have never been let down by the young and inexperienced. Enthusiasm and energy makes up for a lot. On the other hand, I have been let down by the old, experienced , "been there, done that" merchant.


<hr width=100% size=1>this post is a personal opinion, and you should not base your actions on it.
 
Do you know where I might find out more about this incident? To me it sounds like this was a new Beneteau 50 going from St. Gilles or La Rochelle to a Moorings base in the carribean under Reliance Yacht Management, and I've done that very delivery.


Problem is, that at that time of year a force 8 in biscay is considered a weather window rather than time to stay at home.

I would put this incident mainly down to the freak wave that capsized the yacht rather than the inexperience of the skipper.

I happen to know a few skippers that regularly do this route, and I can assure you that they are definitley not inexperienced, and they are vetted by current skippers to make sure that they're up to the job.

Turning this tragic incident into an argument about zero to hero courses is a little bit disrespectful to the dead skipper, I don't see anywhere between any lines that indicates that he was inexperienced.

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Re: Yachtmaster - great name

Would agree its not the candidates fault its the RYAs for not setting appropiate conditions.

It was very difficult if not impossible to get an unlimited First Class Engineers Ticket if your exprience was limited to Ferries or Home Waters Trading. Similarly the deck officers had to show they had signed on on foriegn going vessels for them to get a Foreign Going Masters Ticket.
Perhaps the RYA should change the YM to show limited exprience when first passed and not allow Commercial upgrades until the Commercial YM conforms more to the proper tickets the chaps in the MN have to have. This would stop people getting jobs commercially before they had the exprience to undertake them safely in all situations.

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Re:Pespective

Whilst I am not convinced of the benefit of Z to H courses..they are better than nothing at all and it is after all what we go thro when we learn to drive.. a far more dangerous activity.. How many times were you told that first you had to pass your driving test and then you had to learn to drive.. ??

I think that even Z to H courses equip a skipper better than the driving test does for your average road user!

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Re: Yachtmaster - great name

I think this is the most sensible thing I've seen written about the YM ticket. It's way too easy to get it commercially endorsed. That's what needs fixing.

Tony C.

<hr width=100% size=1>Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.......
 
Re: Yachtmaster - great name

Make Ym scheme leisure only, with a different vocational qualification maybe. Still won't stop accidents though.

No right minded person is going to employ a complete rookie to perform a task for which he/she is not ready, so I would have thought that most fastrackers still end up building experience as paid/unpaid mates before moving on to being skippers. Building this period into the training seems sensible to me.

<hr width=100% size=1>Think I'll draw some little rabbits on my head, from a distance they might be mistaken for hairs.
 
Re: YM or not YM

well, no, not really. You are either YM or not YM: the whole point of an intyernationally recognised qualification is that it confirms a certain level of skill/expertise, not requiring further examination or assimilation by a potential employer. Armed with YM, then a half a day first aid course, short medical, 1 or 2 day sea survival course and you're commercial YM. To skipper a charter boat, the skipper must have commercial YM. So, any commercial YM for power or sail can win a job to skipper a boat up to 100GRT (i think) which is about 80 ish feet, and the face fits, the youthful skipper gets the job. I don't much have a huge problem with this. YM this is just the very start of real professional DOT merchant shipping qualifications.

Nonetheless, regardles of qualifications, death rate on sailing boats is very low. I mean, frexample, you needs lots of quals to be an architect but lots of buildings are crap and/or fall down.

More importantly, YM does require quite a fair lump of experience - 2,500 miles as skipper/watch leader, which is a fair bit, imho. I mean, you can become quite qualified in lotos f things and never actually have carried out the task in question.

I agree with the "won't stop accidents though" - I fail to see where loads more exp/seamiles wd have helped in this situation. If anything, it almost might have beetter if he was a complete loony, and just set off instead of preparing the boat for "several days" as it says in the info - then he'd have been out of biscay. Or, instead of having had lots of confidence-boosting YM training praps with much less he might have been more scardy and not set off until it was calmer.



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Re: YM or not YM

>>> More importantly, YM does require quite a fair lump of experience - 2,500 miles as skipper/watch leader, which is a fair bit, imho. I mean, you can become quite qualified in lotos f things and never actually have carried out the task in question.

The power YM may be different but the sailing qualification requires 50 days/ 2,500 miles' experience in any active capacity on a yacht. The skippering qualification are substantially less and there's no "the buck stops here" mileage qualification (i.e. sailing with people substantially less experienced than yourself so there's nobody you can turn to and say "what do I do now").

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