No Going Back on C4

ColdFusion

ColdFusion

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Just been following the online chat after the programme. Clive answered a question about sailing experience prior to leaving the UK and he said "six days in Greece with no wind"! There's hope for us yet!

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I was trying to ask the question as to why Clive waited until he'd "set-up" the business before going to get an instructors ticket, but it seemed that only the questions that were asked by a number of people were put forward.

I'd still like to know though! Good luck to them anyway, they are probably achieving a way of life that many of us would jump at if we had the money/circumstances/guts etc.

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I definately thought he did it all back to front. No qualifications and didn't even get the boat registered. Also as he was running RYA courses shouldn't he have had the boat DOT coded not just Spanish registered ?

The thing that confused me was that the RYA told mesome time ago that to be a Principle of a sailing school you have to be a Yachmaster Instructer and yet this guy was not even a Yachtmaster. It seems you can teach up to day skipper as a Yachmaster but to actually run a school you have got to be more qualified.

Is this correct and if so how did he get round it ?

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I cant work out how it took 6 weeks to deliver the 2nd boat from Majorca to La Gomero. Thats only 1500 miles....
Fair play to her though....she put on a brave face and got on with it all while he kept buggering off to do something he should have already done.
I cannot believe how unorganised he was about everything.

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Have to agree -- even at just five knots that's just 12.5 days. I also don't understand why they didn't offer that trip to customers -- they had a YM on board.

Echo the ponts abouts about organisation. Admittedly they had some back luck, but to tell the truth they were bloody lucky -- it could have very easily have gone wrong.

I think one of the rather interesting exchanges came when Alex was saying she was selling the thing as a sailing holiday, whereas the YM said no, they are here to learn. Seems to me that a sailing holiday -- i.e. skippered charter and a proper course are two very different things and if I screw up on a course I'd expect to be yelled at...

Perhaps the marketing should be a bit more precise?

Anyway glad he managed it in the end, although I felt he didn't really deserve to given the massively inadequate preparations.

Of course he may have planned thinmgs to nth degree and the editing failed to show it but..... I'd have thought getting a YM ticket and registering the boat in Spain (abd setting up the web page) should have been done before they even flew out......





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You're all right in your criticisms of course and yes - they were lucky but the harder you try, the luckier you get! He had a vision and their combined determination was enough to see them through. If they'd drawn up a business plan, raised more cash, got more experience etc - they may well have run out of steam by the time they were ready. I think that they did the right thing on balance - the time to do something is now - tomorrow never comes for most of us.

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IMHO it all just goes to show that there is no substitute for a bit of good luck now and then!

I think the reason the delivery trip took six weeks must have been a bit of a 'jolly' on the way somewhere. If C4 had shown that, he'd probably be divorced by now?

There is indeed hope for us all.

<hr width=100% size=1>Semper in excretum sum. Sole profundum variat!
 
Hi everyone

This is Clive from last night’s No Going Back. I’ll try and answer some of your questions.

JDB, sorry that I didn’t get to hear your question on the chat after the show, the reason I didn’t get my instructors ticket until after I’d set up was quite simple - why pay another school a fortune to learn to sail when I was about to set up my own. I also had to keep Doug busy so there was no need for two instructors initially.

Goodge: Bear in mind that they had 100+ hours of footage to cut down to 53 minutes. If we looked organised and it looked easy it would make bad TV. Unfortunately you can’t register a boat in Spain until you’ve bought it as you need all the papers. It took a long time because it had to be commercially registered (equivalent to SCV2 in UK). As far as qualifications go, the principal or chief instructor need to be Yachtmaster Instructor and Doug is the latter.

StellaGirl: I t took a week to get the boat ready for the trip and the liferaft (that I had ordered and paid for 2 months earlier!) wasn’t there although they had told me it would be. We left as soon as we got that but ran into some bad weather and got stuck in Gib for a week!

Trevethan: Bear in mind what I said to Goodge, the yacht wasn’t commercially registered at that time so paying customers would not have been insured. We also had a bit of a catch 22, we couldn’t advertise RYA courses until we got the recognition, we couldn’t get the recognition until the yacht was commercially registered, we couldn’t register it until we had bought it. I know it doesn’t come across well but I actually researched and planned this for over 2 years!

PeterStone: You’ve pretty much summed it up.

Chasroberts: We obviously had a few beers along the way. Purely because we were delayed by the weather you understand…

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it, we still haven’t seen the final version! The director is coming out here on holiday today so will have a copy with him. Must go, got a lot of emails to answer – maybe it will have been worth it…..


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Great explanation to all our questions.

Only thing left to say is ' well done, good luck for the future and some of us are jealous!'

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Down here the boats have to be spanish flagged.
Only a UK flagged boat can be DOT coded.

So we get inspected by the Spanish and also by the RYA BUT the RYA cannot give us a coding sticker, though we work to that standard.

Secondly, either the Principal of a sailing school OR the Chief Instructor have to be a YM Instructor. When Clive set up the school he used Doug (who was working for me occassionally at that time) to be his Chief Instructor.

All done quite correctly.

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Registering in Spain

What you don´t grasp is that you cannot register a boat here until it actually arrives. The full commercial registration process takes up to two years.

I can register a boat that hasn´t been built on the UK SSR, or on UK Part One before it is launched but here we need to produce the boat to begin the tortuous process.

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Hi Clive

No criticism of the set up at all - I think you did a great job considering all the bureaucracy in Spain

I just have 2 points...

1 - Your wife must love you very much to embark on the project when it was really your dream....hang on to her!

2 - You should have gone with MUCH more cash!

Truly wish you the best of luck

Mark


<hr width=100% size=1>http://www.geocities.com/jinto100/Jintopics.html
 
Hi Clive this is another Clive from another sea school, only Motor cruising.

Just a question, did the authorities insist on the Spanish coding, only at one time the RYA I believe only accepted MCA coded boats and part 1 registared at that?. Must have changed.

The only thing I find hard to believe is that on a tiny Canary Island you find on a pontoon next door, a Yachtmaster who is also a Sailing Instructor.

I havent found any out here and we are on mainland Spain on the Costa Del Sol.
I am lucky enough to have a partner who is a Ym Cruising instructor and of course our school Principal.

Pity you got stuck in Gib and we didnt know, thats only 20 miles away from us, could have met for a drink. Very good luck to you and Alex and if your ever our way do call in Regards Clive Sun Coast


<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.suncoastmarine.co.uk>Sun Coast Sea School & Charter</A>
 
Hundreds dream about it, very few with the guts to do it.Nice one ,best wishes for an enjoyable and profitable venture.

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Worked in I.T. (I think)



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Yes, Clive was an IT ' Project Manager' who lived on Uk motorways ( i.e one who was in constant demand) , Alex his wife was a Sales and Marketing Director... Ben the son is and was a baby...

<hr width=100% size=1><font color=blue>I am WHAT I say I am</font color=blue>
 
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