Sailing Schools-the chicken or the egg

[davidhand]

I am just curious. Who gives the certification (RYA that is) is it the sailing school or is it the instructor. Can an instructor quallify a student independantly or does it have to be processed through a sailing school. For example can one call a RYA instructor, go for a sail with him and be signed off for whatever level. I can see arguments for both, but do we want sailing to be governed by professionals, personally I think not. I remember the days of the gentlemen/v/plavers at cricket and I cringe at the sight of ads on sailboats and F -1 cars. Lets get profesionals out of all sport, give sports back to the people who compete in it. An amatuer is a gentleman and pays all his own expenses.

 

[Cornishman]

Interesting thoughts but a bit 19th century, don't you think? You will be wanting us all to sail wearing white ducks and yachting caps soon.
If you are referring to RYA Yachtmaster or Coastal Skipper certificates these are obtained after examination by a RYA Yachtmaster Examiner, a person independent of sailing schools. Schools issue 'certificates of successful course completion' once the instructor has signed off the relevant parts of the student's log book (G.15).
To maintain a standard across the whole country the RYA has very strict sets of guidelines for both exams and courses. Get a copy of G.15 and you will see them there.
All these certificates are quite voluntary.You don't have to have any qualifications to go sailing (yet) so what's your problem?

 

[Mirelle]

Well said.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. To allow commerce into sport is to poison it at the fountainhead.

Happily, the answer to your question is that the RYA Examiner is quite independent and can indeed (and will) certify someone who has not attended any school provided, of course, they display the required competence.

One who is known to do so and to favour the practice is, indeed, Tom Cunliffe who writes in this magazine.

Now, when we come to creeping professionalisation, the argument in favour of it is usually that it allows people with a talent for sailing, but without much money, to do a lot of sailing, by being paid for doing, either by the very rich or by corporations.

I do know several such "professional yachtsmen" and quite frankly none of them seems very happy about it.

In the not so very distant past, those of us without much money, such as myself, scrimped and saved and got afloat in something, usually a very small, rather elderly, something, and whilst we may not have raced round the world for the benefit of Volvo or whoever we were probably just as good seamen, confining our voyages to a more modest compass.

The record of lifeboat callouts seems to bear this out. Those of us who went sailing round the coast and across the Channel and the North Sea in dinghies or very modest cruisers, thirty or more years ago, did not seem to need rescuing very often.

More important, the traditions of the sport, now almost entirely lost, meant that the owner or co-owner of a very little boat, genuinely cruising, would be assured of hospitality and help at even the "grandest" yacht clubs - I have very fond memories of this.

The owners of yard - maintained big yachts were, I found, quite happy to chat on terms of equality with the owner of a very little boat - we were both putting equal effort into it!

In my first draft of this reply I mentioned a few well known figures of thirty years ago, met on hards and in Club bars, but I deleted them lest I be accused of name dropping.

Today races are won by the biggest sponsor's cheque book, and what is the point of it all?

 

[sailbadthesinner]

In answer to your first part an instructor can be independent of a sailing school and certifiate you.
In the second part. I think you are espousing a past where the likes of me could not sail or afford to sail unless paid crew. The specs are certainly rose tinted.

What is wrong with professionals? there are too many beginners out there for us to hope they all just figure it out for themselves.
If volvo want to sponsor someone to charge around the globe in a machine how does that affect me? maybe some good peice of kit or innovation may come out of it that one day will trickle down us.

that is the point with sailing, if you donot like the way it is done here lift your hook and go far flung.

...It was like that when i found it!