RYA Yachtmaster Offshore practical exam

awol said:
Isn't that the point of the exam? After at least 50days and 2,500nm is one day going to make the difference between competency and incompetency?
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No it's not.

But who really knows where they stand. I did dazed kipper in about 1991 and have been basically doing it my own way since then apart form the YM theory in about 2002.

A "mock" would allow someone who knows to see you and say yes you should be ok but you need to do x,y and z or alternatively to say no chance until you can do a, b or c.
 
snowleopard said:
When taking an exam on a school boat it is a good idea to be familiar with the boat rather than come to it cold. For example if you are told there is a steering failure and you have to switch to emergency steering you should be able to find the tiller and fit it straight away.
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Is there not a checking of inventory on boarding, just as there should be when taking over a charter boat?

Mike.
 
jac said:
No it's not.

But who really knows where they stand. I did dazed kipper in about 1991 and have been basically doing it my own way since then apart form the YM theory in about 2002.

A "mock" would allow someone who knows to see you and say yes you should be ok but you need to do x,y and z or alternatively to say no chance until you can do a, b or c.
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So you are basically saying you don't think you are competent to gain a Certificate of Competency. What do you do if your hired tutor says you are fine but the examiner doesn't agree?
 
awol said:
So you are basically saying you don't think you are competent to gain a Certificate of Competency. What do you do if your hired tutor says you are fine but the examiner doesn't agree?
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Be a bit annoyed.

But I have no baseline for comparison. I might be barely above dazed kipper or a new as yet undiscovered sailing god (sadly unlikely) but if I have no way of knowing how good I am how can I tell.

If I do the own boat tuition an instructor can say you need to be able to do this exercise to this standard. If you mess up during the tuition an know you can't do it anyway then you would know you would fail.

For example, in familiar waters I don't really do a passage plan,just a quick view of forecast, bramblemet, tides and bimble off somewhere, not navigating or plotting of maintaining a log. That would presumably fail but equally sitting at the chart table writing up the log, taking lots of bearings and showing you can do distance off by vertical sextant angle will also fail.

I see it like driving a car. When I passed my test twenty something years ago I wasn't safe but was doing it the right way. Now I'm probably a lot safer but don't always do it the right way.

If you've grown up being taught the YM way of passing the tests then you will do it right. If you don't know the right way then chances are you'll fail as you can't demonstrate that you know what you should be doing!
 
I've been sailing for 40 years and up to the mid 90's I had nearly 38k miles.
I then started campaigning in dinghy racing until about 5 years ago when I returned to big boats.
The RYA wouldn't let me do the YM as I had not done the required 2.5k miles in the last ten years.
So I opted to do the ICC so I could take the boat abroad etc.

I found it was a bit like having to do your driving test again having driven for 30 years.
(can you remember stopping distances?)
The ICC was no issue but still it really brought into focus the fact that for years if I was unsure about a sound signal, top markers and the like I would simply look it up in Reeds or similar.
I worked on the basis that it was more important to know where to find the answer, quickly and efficiently rather than relying on memory.
I guess this wouldn't get me through an exam.
 
Javelin said:
for years if I was unsure about a sound signal, top markers and the like I would simply look it up in Reeds or similar.
I worked on the basis that it was more important to know where to find the answer, quickly and efficiently rather than relying on memory.
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It might be ok for some things, but in the middle of a manoeuvre with a ship it's not really the time to pop down below and start leafing through the book to find out what his two hoots mean.

Pete
 
prv said:
It might be ok for some things, but in the middle of a manoeuvre with a ship it's not really the time to pop down below and start leafing through the book to find out what his two hoots mean.

Pete
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See I've always remembered that as you go "two" port. And I just know 3 is astern leaving 1 to be answered by a matter of elimination.

That stuff you can always mug up on if a little rusty. It's more a case of which bad habits are fails and which aren't.
 
Firstly there is a big difference between doing 2500 mls as crew than doing it as skipper.

Secondly you do need to revise. I was asked to describe an isolated danger mark and a fairway buoy as a prelude to the exam.

I went out as crew for one exam for the experience then asked a friend who was a YM Instructor to do a prep weekend on my boat. Blind navigation sitting below just using tide tables, contours and buoys and no gps or chart plotter is not something I would do without the prep for YM exam. I was asked to sail from Hamble to Cowes sitting below imagining I was in thick fog. Crew has to confirm identity of buoys but only if I got them within 20m.

Fine if you practise that sort of thing but for me the prep weekend was essential as like most I had got to rely on using a chart plotter for navigation
 
jac said:
See I've always remembered that as you go "two" port. And I just know 3 is astern leaving 1 to be answered by a matter of elimination.

That stuff you can always mug up on if a little rusty. It's more a case of which bad habits are fails and which aren't.
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Try answering what 4 hoots is by process of elimination!
 
awol said:
Isn't that the point of the exam? After at least 50days and 2,500nm is one day going to make the difference between competency and incompetency?
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I passed my driving test in 1966 but I now have to pass an assessment every 3 years for bus driving. When going into the assessment I have to put myself into a test mindset so I do things the 'official' way e.g. apply handbrake when stopping instead of holding it on the footbrake, feeding the wheel hand-to-hand instead of winding the wheel with the heel of my hand to put full lock on and letting it spin through my hands when taking lock off. The same applies to sailing. There are plenty of things we all know we should do but seldom bother with - motoring cones for example - and it is useful to have an instructor remind us.

When I'm skippering I will often tell my crew 'head for that buoy'. In an exam they don't like the 'driving from buoy to buoy' approach and prefer you to give a course to steer using the buoys as a check. There are plenty of other useful tips that will help you to pass the exam, for example always look to see if you can find a transit to guide you. When I set out from home my routine is to hit goto on the GPS, select one of my regular waypoints then hit track on the autopilot. It gets me there safely and reliably but it wouldn't score too highly with an examiner.
 
snowleopard said:
I passed my driving test in 1966 but I now have to pass an assessment every 3 years for bus driving. When going into the assessment I have to put myself into a test mindset so I do things the 'official' way e.g. apply handbrake when stopping instead of holding it on the footbrake, feeding the wheel hand-to-hand instead of winding the wheel with the heel of my hand to put full lock on and letting it spin through my hands when taking lock off. The same applies to sailing. There are plenty of things we all know we should do but seldom bother with - motoring cones for example - and it is useful to have an instructor remind us.

When I'm skippering I will often tell my crew 'head for that buoy'. In an exam they don't like the 'driving from buoy to buoy' approach and prefer you to give a course to steer using the buoys as a check. There are plenty of other useful tips that will help you to pass the exam, for example always look to see if you can find a transit to guide you. When I set out from home my routine is to hit goto on the GPS, select one of my regular waypoints then hit track on the autopilot. It gets me there safely and reliably but it wouldn't score too highly with an examiner.
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Have to say a course to steer in confined waters with loads of boats about would be crazy. I can understand why do it in a cross tide situation but if you're sailing along the coast rather than across the difference between a formal cts and head for that buoy we will be at in 40 minutes is minimal.
 
Sailfree said:
Try answering what 4 hoots is by process of elimination!
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One of my favourite questions is to combine the fog signals. eg: "So I can hear two long blasts followed by four short." (Its not in the book or on the cards but if you know your IRPCS you will know that its a pilot vessel under way but not making way.)

jac said:
Have to say a course to steer in confined waters with loads of boats about would be crazy. I can understand why do it in a cross tide situation but if you're sailing along the coast rather than across the difference between a formal cts and head for that buoy we will be at in 40 minutes is minimal.
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There's no 'what the RYA would like to see' (except good seamanship and a boat and crew managed and handled safely and reasonably efficiently). But if you ALWAYS hop from buoy to buoy you might find the examiner giving you rather more challenging bits of navigation to do.... Good seamanship would be showing some tidal awareness and making sure you are not swept off track by using natural transits etc.

Don't get suckered into believing that there is a 'formula' for passing the exam.
 
john_morris_uk said:
One of my favourite questions is to combine the fog signals. eg: "So I can hear two long blasts followed by four short." (Its not in the book or on the cards but if you know your IRPCS you will know that its a pilot vessel under way but not making way.)



There's no 'what the RYA would like to see' (except good seamanship and a boat and crew managed and handled safely and reasonably efficiently). But if you ALWAYS hop from buoy to buoy you might find the examiner giving you rather more challenging bits of navigation to do.... Good seamanship would be showing some tidal awareness and making sure you are not swept off track by using natural transits etc.

Don't get suckered into believing that there is a 'formula' for passing the exam.
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I think that's where we came in!

The need to have some middle ground between the full 5 day commercial course as exam prep and just rocking up and expecting to pass.
 
jac said:
If I do the own boat tuition an instructor can say you need to be able to do this exercise to this standard. If you mess up during the tuition an know you can't do it anyway then you would know you would fail.

For example, in familiar waters I don't really do a passage plan,just a quick view of forecast, bramblemet, tides and bimble off somewhere, not navigating or plotting of maintaining a log. That would presumably fail ...
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That IS a passage plan, at least for the scope of a local passage. YM isn't really about exercises or even sailing - more about skippering. The idea that there is a YHA way of doing things is a bit of a myth. OK there may be an RYA way of teaching things (MOB etc.) but if your method is sound then you'd be o.k. Not maintaining a log might not be considered sound, but you've already said you are aware of that.
 
john_morris_uk said:
One of my favourite questions is to combine the fog signals. eg: "So I can hear two long blasts followed by four short." (Its not in the book or on the cards but if you know your IRPCS you will know that its a pilot vessel under way but not making way.)



There's no 'what the RYA would like to see' (except good seamanship and a boat and crew managed and handled safely and reasonably efficiently). But if you ALWAYS hop from buoy to buoy you might find the examiner giving you rather more challenging bits of navigation to do.... Good seamanship would be showing some tidal awareness and making sure you are not swept off track by using natural transits etc.

Don't get suckered into believing that there is a 'formula' for passing the exam.
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Just playing top trumps.

you hear one long two short then one long and three short.
 
awol said:
Well done. But I wonder whether the 4 days of pre-exam cramming were necessary to pass the exam or if they were simply a confidence booster. I have experienced trained and ticketed skippers who claim to have "forgotten" skills that they parroted for their tests but have never understood and certainly would not have available in extremis. The skills for YM should be ingrained and constant, not just polished to last for 8 hours and then forgotten.
I am not trying to suggest any shortcomings on the part of the OP, just wondering whether cramming is necessary or even a good thing. I suspect, though, that the independent YM examiners may be inclined to raise the stress levels of crammed candidates to investigate any cracks.
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It’s a good point about exams and cramming, though I doubt cramming helps much for a practical demonstration. Exams are funny things I've never done well in. They tend to be easy when you know the answer and hard when you don't.
Even though I don't think exams are good ways to measure knowledge. How else can you assess some ones knowledge in a short time?
The RYA exams appear weird to me. There is a heck of lot to be covered in one day without any written exam first. And a considerable difference in measuring theoretical knowledge and practical ability to use the knowledge.
If you have the knowledge, a few days practice putting it in to practice is a bit different to the cramming I never bothered to do when I was a lad in school.
 
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