RYA or Cruising Association or Neither

Farmer Piles said:
As it says on the can. How many bother joining either and the benefits thereof, and any advantages of one over the other. Not least the CA is around £140 annually for a member and the RYA is £74 for up to a family of four - £37 for an individual.
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If you are into long distance passages then the Ocean Cruising Club might be of interest. Lots of good stuff, a bit cheaper than the CA at £50 as we don't have a clubhouse in London that 99.99% of the members will never use. You will need a qualifying passage of 1,000 miles for full membership and if a 'blue duster' is important this is not the club for you.
 
Just to say that I have joined the RYA for this year. I felt that their legal advice department would be useful for me. Also the upgrade of the powerboat 2 ticket to an ICC included in the fee was appealing. Hoping to do some cruising this year and more next year so may change to the CA then.
Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.
 
Farmer Piles said:
Just to say that I have joined the RYA for this year. I felt that their legal advice department would be useful for me. Also the upgrade of the powerboat 2 ticket to an ICC included in the fee was appealing. Hoping to do some cruising this year and more next year so may change to the CA then.
Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.
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Congrats, but if you become a sanctimonious snob I'm sending Seastoke down to redress the balance.
 
The CA has a lot to offer for cruisers. I'm not sure the RYA has anything of much value, other than the relevant cruising related courses and qualifications.

We have family membership of both.
 
I’m not a member of either but having spoken to members (a very helpful lady) on their stand at SBS if we were going further afield than just across the channel the CA looks worthwhile and seems to be run by people with real knowledge of the type useful to members -I’m not certain RYA provides benefits which would be of use to same degree -it’s not that I object to belonging being a member of a sailing club and RNLI etc but I struggle with RYA value but happy to be enlightened.
 
Farmer Piles said:
Just to say that I have joined the RYA for this year. I felt that their legal advice department would be useful for me. Also the upgrade of the powerboat 2 ticket to an ICC included in the fee was appealing. Hoping to do some cruising this year and more next year so may change to the CA then.
Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.
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Yeah I joined the RYA for the ICC and then I realised that the RYA actually had no relevance to me at all for the rest of the year. Didn't offer any sense of community and to be honest felt very dry and old school.

I looked at the CA and discovered their Captains Mate app. If you've never heard of it before it is effectively the cruising notes from various CA members about areas and their experience, photos, information on various harbours all accessed via your laptop, tablet or mobile that can also be used offline. As a CA member you can contribute and as a result the database of practical experience builds. Brilliant bit of software. This coupled with all the other benefits mentioned here such as the free cruising area discussions and webinars I've found the CA to be great value.
 
Thanks for that. I wanted to upgrade our Powerboat 2 certificates to ICCs so I figured that this alone will pay for a year's membership of the RYA. Thereafter it sounds to me that the CA is a much better option. Although, for this year I expect that we will only be visiting familiar territory. See how 2022 goes and either join the CA if we look like going further or join this time next year.
 
I think that it's £45 each. Family membership is £74 and the ICC lasts for five years. I thought that good value. That is to get an ICC, we don't have one, no idea what the cost of renewal is.
 
When I asked a few week ago.... They will issue an ICC to a non-member for £47 or you join the RYA and order your ICC, at the same time, for free.
 
goeasy123 said:
When I asked a few week ago.... They will issue an ICC to a non-member for £47 or you join the RYA and order your ICC, at the same time, for free.
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Presumably you then have to rejoin every fifth year to keep the ICC valid, or is there some other way of renewing the ICC when the time comes?
 
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