laika
Well-Known Member
I don't think that post #119, the rest of this thread or the article supports that conclusion.
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RYA - lost the plot?
- Thread starter oldbilbo
- Start date
I don't think that post #119, the rest of this thread or the article supports that conclusion.
oldbilbo
...
The RYA possibly has its reasons for seeking to exclude boats under 10m. from assessment duties, and those under 7m. LWL from 'qualifying mileage', but those reasons might well be due to lobbying by sea school principals - i.e. money - and the conspicuous shortage of relevant sea experience among RYA senior staff.
The French have made offshore sailing and racing their own, largely due to the impetus of 'hard knocks' sea schools such as Glenans, and a generation - two generations - racing Figaro and Mini 6.50 types right around French coasts and across oceans. We, here, are just beginning to catch up.
Consider, for example, the present and previous 'Jester Challenges' - a Westerly 22, an Albin Vega 27, a UFO 27, a Twister 28, a Kingfisher ( junk rig ) 26, a Contest 25, a Contessa 26.... and there is OCC award-winning Rory McDougall, twice across the Atlantic AND around the world in a Tiki 21 catamaran.
Then there's 'Bula' - a lightweight 25' Robber and the first boat into Terceira in last month's JAC, enduring continuous strong gales,,,,, and then 25 'Jester' herself, matriarch of all that came after, and still today at sea just north of the Azores.
Didn't Dame Ellen McArthur sail singlehanded around Britain in a Corribee? And speaking of Corribees - 21' LOA and 16' LWL - wasn't that the boat that Roger Taylor used year after year in his s/h forays into the High Arctic? Now replaced by 'Ming Ming II', an Achilles 24 and already a long-legged veteran of the Barents Sea.
There is a wealth of talent exercised by these owner/skippers in small but eminently seaworthy boats. For the RYA to continue to pretend that they, and their skippers, are somehow unworthy of acknowledgement takes me right back to my original 'OP' question.
Seajet
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Hi Bilbo,
I think the beginnings of the Jester ethos;
http://www.anderson22class.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/transat_complete.pdf
I think the beginnings of the Jester ethos;
http://www.anderson22class.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/transat_complete.pdf
dom
Well-Known Member
Certainly agree with the principle that YM shld be both upwardly and downwardly inclusive. The 10m cut-off is probably open to a simple prosaic explanation. The UK has a vast coastline and the RYA endeavors to get folk examined pretty much anywhere. Another aspect of the UK scene is that examiners are mostly retired, for the simple reason that it doesn't pay much and they must sometimes travel quite a way for not very much.
So, said instructor (perhaps in his seventies) arrives at a little boat, which must crewed for the test in order to demonstrate crew management; the "get up in thar rigging ye scurvy scum" type thing. That means a minimum of three passengers. It's not really on to wedge the instructor in the companionway for 8 hours, which kind of makes the logistics difficult.
Now take a whizz down to La Rochelle where one will find a 25 year old instructor who's just as happy to examine whilst perched on the foredect of a Contessa, downhill with kite in a F6 ...aside that is from the inevitable ooh la la and boef !! Different wage structures, different scene.
Suggestion: allow smaller boat accreditation, but only in selected yachting centres where a suitable youngster can be found to clamber around on top of the boat the boat (basically any racing sailor) as opposed to wising to brace himself in the cockpit somewhere? Just a suggestion and happy to be shot down
capnsensible
Well-Known Member
When you took your Master Of Not Understanding test, the examiner clearly had very little to do.
capnsensible
Well-Known Member
Im sorry that you still dont get this. Possibly an International Certificate of Competence, but what you claim is simply impossible.
If you feel your claim is valid however, please contact me by PM and lets take it up with Richard Falk at the RYA with hard evidence.
We can then post the result on here to ease the fears of the worried,
:encouragement:
dom
Well-Known Member
Most superyachts can be easily linked to an individual. It is for this reason that young YMs entering the business are pretty much immediately taught the importance of confidentiality and discretion ..."if you talk you walk" is the term. That's why even smartphones and cameras are tightly controlled. And contrary to the received wisdom here, this privacy obsession is not all, or even mainly to do with hot women and long lenses. Superyachts are for example a great way for a CEO of a major firm to have a discrete dinner with a potential target -- if that gets out a legal/regulatory firestorm will typically ensue. The boat is therefore often rented so even the crew have no idea who these people are.
That you don't know this seems kind of odd to me. Maybe there's an explanation, maybe the truth is that your knowledge of this sector is paper thin, who knows?
And you'll have to forgive me for not going round the houses again on the 'no-test' thing, sorry!
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Tranona
Well-Known Member
You clearly don't understand what the change is about. As post#119 says there has never been a distinction. The change is to ensure that all those taking the qualification have a knowledge of tides - even though they may never sail in tidal waters.
Tides are a small part of the syllabus, and even in the UK their importance varies according to where and how you sail. Are we going to have a special certificate for sailing in Poole where the tides are different from anywhere else? Or do you think that sailing in the Med is somehow "easier" than sailing elsewhere and the criteria for the assessment lower?
Tranona
Well-Known Member
The qualification has a wide market and the type of sailing you describe is arguably a small minority and shrinking. The reality is that boats have got bigger and the types that you describe have not been built in any numbers for more than 30 years. Anyway the minimum criteria for qualifying mileage is 7m LWL so the boats you mention comply. The criticism of that cut off point is that it excludes certain boats that have undertaken offshore passages, but the vast majority of 25' LOA and above boats meet that criterion, which of course includes just about all the popular small cruisers from the past.
So a bit like the "tides" issue it really is a non issue for the vast majority of people.
GrahamM376
Well-Known Member
Perhaps the RYA should visit some of the more remote (cheaper) areas where there are plenty of old small boats around. I agree that a boat on which people are taking exams has to be suitable but still maintain it's unfair and elitist to deny someone the opportunity of qualifying mile building without having to buy a larger boat. Many can't afford or don't want to charter.
Edit. Taking it to the silly extreme, how could anyone justify telling this guy - "sorry, we don't recognise that passage, do it again in a bigger boat"
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-smallest-sailboat-to-ever-cross-the-Atlantic-ocean
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dom
Well-Known Member
All fair points, then again it's precisely those remote areas where the RYA struggles to get an instructor happy to squash onto a smaller boat. I understand that's why the RYA gave itself a bit of discretionary wiggle room but when challenged on this a couple of years ago felt obliged to move the goalposts a little. How about the compromise I suggested in post #164?
doug748
Well-Known Member
I don't think we were discussing the change at that point. I must admit that I did have a little suspicion that the Yachtmaster test was easier in the Med.
So to clear it up I wrote to the RYA and all is now well:
“Dear Doug,
Ahoy there!
Thank you for your letter about the relative degree of difficulty in taking Yachtmaster at different sites. I think I can put your mind at rest. Whilst I would agree that taking your 29ft Fowling Punt from Margate to Southend in March would be a testing trip so would the Caribbean voyage you mentioned, however the skill sets are quite different.
Even coming to anchor in the crush at Iles des Saintes can be a problem not to mention getting a prominent table (with shade) on the Casa du Port terrace. There is also the matter of negotiation with the boy about the carved coconut shell in the form of an Hawaiian dancer – the leg fell off mine after two minutes and you try getting your money back! Sea states can also be a trial I had a very delicate passage once after the Seafood with Curried Clam.
Don't get me started on technical systems, last time the chiller went mad, the Sancerre was overcooled twice and later on, warm to the touch – never a problem on Canvey Island! I expect the Punt has little more than the standard fridge freezer but you get my drift.
Yachts are now more modern and bigger with materials so you point about tidal difficulties is lost on me I am afraid.
However I remain,. Yours in sport.
Gus Soft-Shackle.
For the RYA, Marketing and Product Placement”
Tranona
Well-Known Member
Perhaps the RYA should visit some of the more remote (cheaper) areas where there are plenty of old small boats around. I agree that a boat on which people are taking exams has to be suitable but still maintain it's unfair and elitist to deny someone the opportunity of qualifying mile building without having to buy a larger boat. Many can't afford or don't want to charter.
Edit. Taking it to the silly extreme, how could anyone justify telling this guy - "sorry, we don't recognise that passage, do it again in a bigger boat"
You can never cater for everybody. Just about any qualifications sets minimum criteria for certain aspects of what it is assessing and examining - why should the RYA be any different. Many "professional" qualifications require qualifying experience that meets specific criteria, so not unreasonable to set criteria that reflect the objectives of the qualification.
The reality is that the number of people undertaking offshore passages in boats less than 7m LWL is tiny - and the number who want to use such passages for the purposes of gaining a qualification even tinier.
laika
Well-Known Member
Are you suggesting that a 21' boat which can be manhandled around and easily single handed is the right craft to gain experience for a test (i.e. YM Offshore) which is partly about crew management and manoeuvring boats which displace 10s of tonnes or are you saying that there should be a separate exam for demonstrating high proficiency in sailing small boats?
sarabande
Well-Known Member
Jester was built in 1953, some 25 years before your article ! Though much of the philosophy in Bob Salmon's word are echoed in the current Jester sailing rubrics.
Seajet
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DOM,
agreed discretion is required on superyots; I knew someone - a Yachtmaster Offshore - whose first sailing job was skippering a German owned one in the Med'.
One day after anchoring somewhere off Italy, a human body came up with the anchor; seeing as it was wrapped in plastic suicide or natural means seemed unlikely...
The German boat owner insisted ' put it back, I don't want the fuss and paperwork ' - the new skipper reluctantly agreed but not happy as it put him in an awful situation.
At the end of the season the German disappeared without paying him - an occupational hazard I expect.
OldBilbo,
they did acknowledge smaller boats for Yachtmaster in 1992, no idea about now; my tens of thousands of miles in a 22' were happily taken as qualifying mileage, and I made a point of asking the examiner* if I could have taken the test on my boat, he said yes.
* Then again he was a lovely bloke, had taken part in every Fastnet possible and was linked to the Marines - his lovely wooden boat - named something like ' Sarai Maria ', a South African army song ? was at the disposal of the Marines, and last I heard is now with them full time.
This examiner chap had been on the WWII HMS Exeter, I think at the Battle Of The River Plate !
I'd love to know more about him, I fear he might no longer be with us.
oldbilbo
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Am I right in recalling that the Royal Yachting Association's 'National Sailing Scheme' was lifted/pirated in the early 1970s from the certification scheme then in use by HM Forces for 'certification' of volunteer skippers and mates for the 3 Services' racing and adventurous training schemes...? And that the RYA 'senior staff' were then all ex-services officers with enthusiasm for seamanship skills?
Am i right in recalling that the RYA's scheme was for 'Certification' - that certified successful candidates/examinees had demonstrated the requisite skills to the required standards, and amassed the required sea-going experience.... a feature conspiculously absent from the preceeding DoT Yachtmaster Scheme?
And that somehow, along the way, the principle of 'certification' was permitted /encouraged to 'morph' into a 'Qualification' without anyone paying much attention....?
Now it seems that the original populist training scheme has been moved up market by market influences, and the 'bottom end' is being slowly closed out. 'Entry-level boats are now about 35'.....'
Am i right in recalling that the RYA's scheme was for 'Certification' - that certified successful candidates/examinees had demonstrated the requisite skills to the required standards, and amassed the required sea-going experience.... a feature conspiculously absent from the preceeding DoT Yachtmaster Scheme?
And that somehow, along the way, the principle of 'certification' was permitted /encouraged to 'morph' into a 'Qualification' without anyone paying much attention....?
Now it seems that the original populist training scheme has been moved up market by market influences, and the 'bottom end' is being slowly closed out. 'Entry-level boats are now about 35'.....'
roblpm
Well-Known Member
I like sailing and these forums as it is the only area of my life where I am made to feel young at 47........!
Seajet
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I didn't have any problems ' managing ' the crew of the GibSea 42 I took my YM exam on, I've had larger boats than my 22' but usually only with one novice girlfriend or a chum, just the same.
There are two sides to the ' large crew management ' argument; when it came to the MOB part of the test, I'd been warned not to let on to the examiner that I normally sailed with just my girlfriend, or he'd make me do the recovery drill singlehanded.
In fact I was happy to tell him and do it solo, as I thought it a fair point and test.
Sandy Bottom
Well-Known Member
I cannot remember the detail but that's the jist of it - all my sailing, canoeing, and power certs became pretty much redundant and I than had to do it all over again with RYA/DOT.