If you could train anywhere in the world?

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dustynet

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Hi all,

If you had your yacht training days to live all over again, knowing then what you know now, if you could attend anywhere in the world for your first steps such as DS, where would you go, and more interestingly why?

Assumptions:
Must be english speaking for the purpose of the training delivery
Training must be full DS tidal, not just shore based.
Must be able to crack on before christmas
Assumptions made around time and money are no object of course :D

Thanks
Dusty
 
The Solent.

Complicated tides, shipping, collision avoidance situations, good chance of lousy weather, plenty of marinas to practice manouvering in, lots of anchorages and buoys to be picked up.

It has everything.

It's like the difference between learning to drive in London and some sleepy market town in Suffolk
 
dustynet said:
Hi all,

If you had your yacht training days to live all over again, knowing then what you know now, if you could attend anywhere in the world for your first steps such as DS, where would you go, and more interestingly why?

Assumptions:
Must be english speaking for the purpose of the training delivery
Training must be full DS tidal, not just shore based.
Must be able to crack on before christmas
Assumptions made around time and money are no object of course :D

Thanks
Dusty
Click to expand...

This is going to be your main problem I suspect, unless you are genuinely prepared to spend lots on travel.

(I did mine in Cornwall BTW. It was lovely, but I concur with Poignard's thoughts above.)
 
dustynet said:
If you had your yacht training days to live all over again, knowing then what you know now, if you could attend anywhere in the world for your first steps such as DS, where would you go, and more interestingly why?
Click to expand...
Training days, every day is a school day.
 
Poignard said:
The Solent.
Click to expand...

Doing my DS practical (finally getting around to it!) there in two weeks time.

Chose the Solent for all the reasons Poignard mentioned, I want to learn/experience the most I can in my time with a qualified skipper.

Can't wait!
 
dustynet said:
Hi all,

If you had your yacht training days to live all over again, knowing then what you know now, if you could attend anywhere in the world for your first steps such as DS, where would you go, and more interestingly why?

Assumptions:
Must be english speaking for the purpose of the training delivery
Training must be full DS tidal, not just shore based.
Must be able to crack on before christmas
Assumptions made around time and money are no object of course :D

Thanks
Dusty
Click to expand...
Southern Brittany would be my choice, not because it offers better sailing challenges than the Solent (though it has everything apart from a lot of big ships) but because Vannes and Le Palais beat Gosport and Cowes hands down.
For a pre Xmas course maybe Isla Canela on the Spanish-Portuguese southern border to avoid 5 days swaddled in fleece and Gortex.
Both locations have British run RYA schools.
 
Poignard said:
The Solent.

Complicated tides, shipping, collision avoidance situations, good chance of lousy weather, plenty of marinas to practice manouvering in, lots of anchorages and buoys to be picked up.

It has everything.

It's like the difference between learning to drive in London and some sleepy market town in Suffolk
Click to expand...
Have to agree with my learned friend.

I enjoyed 20-odd years sailing around north Wales and it has some challenging tidal gates offset by some nice bays and anchorages.

I now keep my boat in The Clyde but, in moving there, had to sign the Official Secrets Act so the locals would be out for my hide if I told just how good it is ?

Over the last 5 years or so I’ve done quite a lot of sailing in Lake Solent. It really is a good place to learn. Lots of local regulations from a huge commercial port and a military port. A lot of traffic, unseen by the majority of sea school, so lots of lights and day shapes to see. More than a few shallow patches to catch the unwary. A lot of lights to make the night sail come alive.

I’d never heard “your intentions are unclear” until I sailed there. It can be heard with a fair degree of certainty on every Saturday and Sunday in the summer season due to the number of numpties afloat, none of which, I hasten to add, would be a member of these forums ???
 
Another vote for the Solent.

I did my Coastal Skipper practical there, and I don't think it could have been a better location for training purposes.

There are almost endless river mouths, harbours, marinas, channels, shoals, obstructions, buoys, navigation lights and shapes, pontoons, ferries, shipping, yachts, strong and weak tides, tidal gates, etc. etc. all in very close proximity, so you don't spend hours of your precious training time just jogging along. You are presented with more, and more varied, challenges and learning/confirming techniques than anywhere else I can think of.

I only did mine there because it was for me at the time the cheapest, but with the benefit of hindsight I'm really glad that's where I did it, and would make the same choice again. Other places might be more scenic, exotic and sunny, but I don't think the concentration and variety of training opportunities could be better.

If you've got the time to admire the scenery, explore the shoreside attractions, etc., you're not making (or being given) the most of the training opportunities. Myself and my fellow 'trainees' had a whale of a time without doing any of that holiday-making stuff.

I also did mine in the depths of winter, again to save money, but that turned out to be good, too: lots more 'night' hours and practice, and empty parts of marinas to do our much repeated 'circuits and bumps' of berthing/de-berthing and close quarters manoeuvring with varied combinations of settings and constraints/factors.
 
I would maybe go to an area I didn't know.
You learn new places and not knowing the area, you're forced to do stuff by the book.
If you know e.g. the Western Solent tolerably well, you will tend to rarely look at a t chart, know what the tide is doing etc, and the instructor won't know if you're capable of working from scratch and you won't IMHO learn as much.

I think a good instructor will find all the challenges you need within about 15 miles of any port in the UK?
It's not really about the quality of the shoreside eateries. I don't recall spending much time ashore, and one pub is much like another when you're part of a crew of 6?
 
In UK the Solent is probably the best choice. Plenty of places to sail and visit and being sheltered you can get out even in bad weather.

Further afield there are (RYA/English speaking) schools in Gibraltar and the Canaries.
 
When I did my Yachtmaster 27 years ago the Solent was my home stomping ground then, and I wanted to do it somewhere different and unfamiliar - a pal was doing hers then in North Wales out of Conwy on a Victoria 34. So I signed up there as well, and we had an excellent week, with lots of new places to visit, challenging tides and navigation situations, and a Liverpool Arms pub to visit in almost every port we stopped at. :)
This was a five day training / refresher course first, followed by the 2 day exam.
 
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Based on my current level of experience, I would choose an area that I have found the most challenging/interesting.
There are two that immediately come to mind:

Firstly, the Friesian Islands and the Waddenzee. You want tidal, they got tidal alright and a miscalculation can easily leave you stranded for the next six months as the water is pretty thin at the best of times. The Zeegatts (passages between the islands) can be hell on earth in the wrong conditions and they have enough markers and nav challenges to write entire books on, as indeed there have. The outside is pure North Sea and there is plenty of wind to be had. It was challenging enough to have me on high alert the entire time I was sailing there.
The Dutch speak English well enough to put any anglophone to shame.

Next recommendation would be Northern Brittany and the CI, presenting such features as the Illes Chaussee, Chenal du Four, Raz du Seine etc, nicely garnished with up to 12m tides, strong currents, generous helpings of rock obstructions and in what amounts to sailing in the open ocean. Compared to the North, I found Southern Brittany rather relaxing and the Morbihan a lake; Vannes is lovely though, but that is hardly to the point here.
For food and gastronomy it beats Holland by a mile.

As a didactic tool either area will pretty much prepare you for anything, IMHO.
 
Laminar Flow said:
Based on my current level of experience, I would choose an area that I have found the most challenging/interesting.
There are two that immediately come to mind:

Firstly, the Friesian Islands and the Waddenzee. You want tidal, they got tidal alright and a miscalculation can easily leave you stranded for the next six months as the water is pretty thin at the best of times. The Zeegatts (passages between the islands) can be hell on earth in the wrong conditions and they have enough markers and nav challenges to write entire books on, as indeed there have. The outside is pure North Sea and there is plenty of wind to be had. It was challenging enough to have me on high alert the entire time I was sailing there.
The Dutch speak English well enough to put any anglophone to shame.

Next recommendation would be Northern Brittany and the CI, presenting such features as the Illes Chaussee, Chenal du Four, Raz du Seine etc, nicely garnished with up to 12m tides, strong currents, generous helpings of rock obstructions and in what amounts to sailing in the open ocean. Compared to the North, I found Southern Brittany rather relaxing and the Morbihan a lake; Vannes is lovely though, but that is hardly to the point here.
For food and gastronomy it beats Holland by a mile.

As a didactic tool either area will pretty much prepare you for anything, IMHO.
Click to expand...
All these 'difficult' things may actually not be helpful as tools to teach 4 or 5 people as much as possible in 5 or 6 days.
Big tides may mean you only get one go at things per day.
And if the weather is against you, you might not get much sailing done.
Whereas in the Solent, you can be in and out of several places per day.
Also, it's a learning thing, it might be helpful for people to be able to learn by their mistakes without killing one another or wrecking the boat.
 
+1 for The Canary Islands. Big seas, good breeze, nice weather this time of year, cheap beer. What else could you need
 
Wing Mark said:
Big tides may mean you only get one go at things per day.
Click to expand...
Really, how so? Is it because a higher tide takes longer to ebb or flood and has the moon been reliably informed about this?
As far as I know, things change with more or less the same regularity in areas with high tides and within a similar time frame or so, but the velocity of the flow might be higher.

What is important for instructional purposes is the density of navigational challenges that a given area may provide, otherwise one might as well train on some lake or reservoir. The locations I suggested provide plenty of exercise opportunity and within quite compact areas.
The Waddenzee, for example, offers an exceptional density for navigational material with the possibility of switching to the Isselmeer in inclement weather. For those susceptible to vertigo, the tides, while obviously critical, are actually not all that high either.

I have sailed the Solent, and while it may be convenient for South Coast residents, I have to say I didn't find it terribly challenging. Given the choice and to sharpen up the learning curve a bit, I would always choose something that is challenging enough to take me out of my comfort zone.
If I have a need for sun & fun, I can always do that when I've acquired the smarts and experience through some (rigorous) training to enjoy it.

With the world about to head into lockdown again, it may render the entire proposition irrelevant either way.
 
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