RYA courses explained.

powerskipper

powerskipper

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Thanks for your post and am glad you find all this clear.
I find it confusing as it is not specified at all times whether the course is ashore or afloat.
I have a powerboat level 2 certificate but this is not mentioned in the list of certificates of competence, has it been dropped (the certificate not the course)?
Whilst we need some sort of body to stand up for boatist's rights and help further the activity it seems that a lot courses overlap. Is a shorebased course necessary before taking the boat based course? Presumably they are best both done. How inferior is an online course compared to attending a training centre? How inferior is it to going out in a boat for the same course?
IMHO someone at RYA ought to clarify all this instead of producing confusing lists.
Sorry for the rant.
 
To be fair Montemar I think those graphics clarify which courses are afloat and which ashore and which are prerequisites and which advised quite well.

The only powerboat certificate of competency is the Advanced (I've got mine coming up in February!).

Regarding online vs classroom teaching, I did the VHF SRC online which was superb, Dayskipper Theory online which was OK but YM Theory in a classroom, the extra bits in the classroom, the anecdotes from the instructor and working with the other student present made it more rewarding for me than the online DS Theory.
 
The big issue with all these bits of paper is that if a person turns up at, say, as sailing club with a RYA Level 2 and a Safety Boat certificate, you still have no idea as to their ability and competency.......in the worst case you can be looking at a person with little more than 4 days experience on the water, a wallet that is £250 lighter and thinking they are god's gift to boating. After we got caught out at my sailing club I did an informal check with a couple of centres as to how many people they fail on courses........on my small sample, the answer is zero, although some candidates were advised to get some more experience.

In fairness to the RYA staff who assess the teaching centres, they do advise that anyone in either a club or centre environment that has responsibility for rostering safety boat crews takes the time out to do their own assessment of the person. So, make sure a person not known to your club, is both familiarised with your local equipment and environment, but also use that opportunity to see if you really have the next Richard Evans, or did you get the d***head.

I have a couple of RYA certificates from many years ago and my recollection of getting the was i needed quite a lot of logged experience on the water before I was allowed to do the course......perhaps this needs to be reinstated for those certificates such as Safety Boat??
 
On the other hand when I did RYA Safety Boat there was a lad on my course who had many times more experience than me who was failed, he'd spent years driving RIBs but couldn't drive a greasy stick up a dog's arse. Which would you rather? Someone with no ticket but loads of experience who couldn't do the job, or someone who has proven they can?

I agree an assessment is a good way of doing things, but a ticket should show you've reached the required standard.
 
mm42 said:
On the other hand when I did RYA Safety Boat there was a lad on my course who had many times more experience than me who was failed, he'd spent years driving RIBs but couldn't drive a greasy stick up a dog's arse. Which would you rather? Someone with no ticket but loads of experience who couldn't do the job, or someone who has proven they can?

I agree an assessment is a good way of doing things, but a ticket should show you've reached the required standard.
Click to expand...

Grease notwithstanding, surely it's still fairly difficult to actually get the dog to acquiesce, no?
 
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