Yachtmaster Exam 2021

[nortada]

I did all of my sail training with the Joint Services Adventurous Sail Training Centre (JSASTC); based at HMS Hornet, Gosport. By the time it came to my Yachtmaster Offshore assessment JSACTC had just sold off all of their Contessa 32s and taken delivery of Victoria 34s.

As I had done all of my previous courses on the Contessas, for me the Victoria, which was much heavier, was a voyage into the unknown.

In addition to the examiner, the crew consisted of 4 yachtmaster candidates and 2 novices, who had hardly any sailing experience.

The examiner explained that to succeed, in addition to demonstrating our skills and knowledge, we should get the 2 novices up to Comp Crew or possibly Day Skip standard.

After re-rigging the boat from scratch, we spent the next couple of hours doing bumps and grinds and getting the novices competent at getting alongside in all configurations.

The examiner then advised one of the candidates that he was to take us to Saint- Malo and we would be departing in 2 hours, after a full crew brief. Whilst ‘the lucky candidate’ planned the trip and prepared his brief, the remaining 3 were required to brief/teach a selected topic. Given my background, I fell on my feet as my subject was safety equipment and survival at sea.

After a meal and a briefing, as evening set in we headed off down the Solent.

Twelve hours later after various exercises (including MOB at night), we put into Alderney. The examiner said those who wanted to, could go ashore but I was to take us to Saint-Malo on the next suitable tide, down the Swinge! Nobody went ashore and we departed at the appropriate time But after another few adventures pitched up outside Peter Port, Guensey - in the dark.

Relived of my command, we spent the next 24 hours around the Channel Island before. Pitching up in Cherbourg on Bastille Night, where the examiner (who was a Brigadier in real life) declared a 12 hour amnesty and took the whole crew ashore for an evening on him. The next day we did numerous MOBs in Cherbourg outer harbour before departing for Saint-Vaast. On this leg all of the crew had to go to the mast-head to check the tricolour.

Following a stop over in Saint-Vaast, we returned to Cowes all the way under spinnaker. Quite the best sail I have ever had.

At Cowes we had a thorough crew debrief and the famous ‘walk down the pontoon’ before returning to Gosport. Six days later and nearly 500 miles in the logbook.

Result, 4 new yachtmasters, 2 very capable day skippers who were invited to return to Gosport in the near future to do a Coastal Skipper Course.

We all knew we had sailed with a master mariner, who never touched the helm but taught us so much.

Totally knackering but a truly great experience.

 

[zoidberg]

I wonder what he was like as a brigadier....

Damn good training, stretching and adding to your skills. Privileged to have had that 'top end' stuff on HerMaj's account.
The Services' yotmaster training - tri-service - was a darn sight better than the watered-down RYA National Training Scheme - which has been diluted more and more as sea-schools' commercial imperatives have dictated.

I don't recall ANY 'zero to hero' types with a Services ticket.

 

[nortada]

I wonder what he was like as a brigadier....

Damn good training, stretching and adding to your skills. Privileged to have had that 'top end' stuff on HerMaj's account.
The Services' yotmaster training - tri-service - was a darn sight better than the watered-down RYA National Training Scheme - which has been diluted more and more as sea-schools' commercial imperatives have dictated.

I don't recall ANY 'zero to hero' types with a Services ticket.

After I left the service, I did a bit of instructing but quit when it was explained that the customer was ‘paying to pass so nobody at this school fails and there were no bad students just poor instructors’.

 

[mmbamb1234]

After I left the service, I did a bit of instructing but quit when it was explained that the customer was ‘paying to pass so nobody at this school fails and there were no bad students just poor instructors’.

You do hear about people failing the RYA courses (Stray Kipper, Coastal Skipper etc) but as you imply, not very often... The ones I've heard about tend to be at the bigger schools, not sure if this is just because they put more people through the courses or are less worried about the bad reviews etc from disappointed students... While you can get the completion certificates commercially endorsed, realistically they do allow you to do much you wouldn't be allowed to do without any sort of ticket.
Sure there is a lot on here about fast-track/zero to hero schemes (not the route I took - competent sailor before I did any RYA courses and 11 years between Stray Kipper and YM exam), and I understand the negative impression many have, it's unreasonable to expect someone with 13 weeks training from a standing start will be as well rounded a sailor as someone with say 20 years experience who finally gets round to taking their YM Exam. Having said that I've been impressed with the Fast-track guys I've sailed with, seems like they mostly get to sail on different boats and with different instructors these days so learn different ways of doing things etc. They also effectively do 6 or 7 prep weeks and are expected to do more boat handling etc. on the junior courses than a regular student would be. I think it's also necessary to be realistic with the type of jobs minimum miles fast-track yachtmasters get these days, Deckhand on a superyacht, Mate or lower on a training ship, Flotilla Skipper/Mate in Greece, in my opinion nothing they are not prepared for with the training they get.

 

[capnsensible]

After I left the service, I did a bit of instructing but quit when it was explained that the customer was ‘paying to pass so nobody at this school fails and there were no bad students just poor instructors’.

Sadly that seemed to be the case some 25 years ago in a few schools as yachting training grew exponentially. My own experience of being an instructor myself having worked for several schools and owned my own is that stricter inspection from the RYA addressing such complaints has rooted out such practices.
I learnt to be an instructor via the JSSC route and had a blast. After leaving Her Maj payroll, I went full time. The evolution of the instructor qualification has leapt ahead and in my opinion has improved standards on both RTC and instruction enormously. One can see this on the 5 annual updates.
It's also been my great pleasure to have prepped more than 100 candidates for their YM exams. Awesome way to earn a living, sailing at its best!

 

[goeasy123]

I'd like to do some training, but from a pedagogical point of view the YM and the RYA syllabus is out of date. I've crewed on YM courses and noted that all the YM instructors agreed in general and/or on particular points.
Much like BobnLesley's experience I've also crewed with YM qualified skippers that concerned me with their the lack of common sense and attitude, never mind their interpretation or memory of the content of the YM exam they'd taken.
On my DS practical one candidate dominated the whole course with the examiner trying to get them through. They needed the qualification to be admitted to a syndicate. At the end of the week I wouldn't have wanted them anywhere near a boat I owned.

 

[doug748]

I'd like to do some training, but from a pedagogical point of view the YM and the RYA syllabus is out of date. I've crewed on YM courses and noted that all the YM instructors agreed in general and/or on particular points.
......................

Can you give some specific examples? Not trying to put you on the spot here, just interested.

.

 

[benjenbav]

I'd like to do some training, but from a pedagogical point of view the YM and the RYA syllabus is out of date. I've crewed on YM courses and noted that all the YM instructors agreed in general and/or on particular points.
Much like BobnLesley's experience I've also crewed with YM qualified skippers that concerned me with their the lack of common sense and attitude, never mind their interpretation or memory of the content of the YM exam they'd taken.
On my DS practical one candidate dominated the whole course with the examiner trying to get them through. They needed the qualification to be admitted to a syndicate. At the end of the week I wouldn't have wanted them anywhere near a boat I owned.

I'm surprised that so many seem to have trained for and taken YM exams in groups.

My route was entirely different: I'd been messing about in boats my whole life and, in my late 40s I thought I'd see whether my knowledge and experience aligned with what was expected for YM.

I hired an instructor whom I knew well (who had previously been an examiner and, indeed, an examiner of instructors) for a day to crew and observe my dealing with the various issues that would be examined: MOB, blind nav, passage planning, boathandling, IRPCS, crew management etc.

Having identified two areas that needed to be addressed, which in my case were crew management - unsurprising as I'd spent pretty much all of my time on the water effectively or actually singlehanded; and insufficient night-time miles - again, sailing for pleasure around the coast, my experience was mostly in the daytime, we worked on those over a few weeks - including a memorable XC night passage which followed my first and probably last steak tartare (not sure the arteries are up to it these days) in Cherbourg, when I had a rotten dose of flu, had intended to order beef wellington and thought "tartare" meant "en croute".

I then booked an examiner and hired crew for the exam, which was a wholly enjoyable experience of pottering around the Solent day and night managing to avoid hitting things or requiring the emergency services.

 

[Wing Mark]

Long time ago, but I did my YM practical in the early 2000's.
5 of us on the boat, 2 YM candidates, one comp crew and one Coastal skipper and and one day skipper.
I went as a last minute deal, it was very late season.
It was great.
I learned a lot, mostly about working with less experienced crew, and a different kind of teamwork to the racing I'd been doing.
I don't think anything I did then would be 'out of date' now.
I think they've added some stuff about chart plotters and so forth since then?

A mate of mine did 'fail ' his YM, sort of.
He was a better boat handler than me, having grown up with boats, but his theory was weak on things like working out tides, vectors etc.
He spent a lot of evenings with an instructor and a retired maths teacher and re-took the YM two week later.

 

[mmbamb1234]

I'm surprised that so many seem to have trained for and taken YM exams in groups.

My route was entirely different: I'd been messing about in boats my whole life and, in my late 40s I thought I'd see whether my knowledge and experience aligned with what was expected for YM.

I hired an instructor whom I knew well (who had previously been an examiner and, indeed, an examiner of instructors) for a day to crew and observe my dealing with the various issues that would be examined: MOB, blind nav, passage planning, boathandling, IRPCS, crew management etc.

Having identified two areas that needed to be addressed, which in my case were crew management - unsurprising as I'd spent pretty much all of my time on the water effectively or actually singlehanded; and insufficient night-time miles - again, sailing for pleasure around the coast, my experience was mostly in the daytime, we worked on those over a few weeks - including a memorable XC night passage which followed my first and probably last steak tartare (not sure the arteries are up to it these days) in Cherbourg, when I had a rotten dose of flu, had intended to order beef wellington and thought "tartare" meant "en croute".

I then booked an examiner and hired crew for the exam, which was a wholly enjoyable experience of pottering around the Solent day and night managing to avoid hitting things or requiring the emergency services.

I think it's probably down to convenience for most people, even if you own or have access to a suitable boat you still have to arrange an examiner/private instructor and crew members etc. Or you can pay £600 (plus exam fee) for use of a boat, food and an instructor for a week and it's all arranged for you.

 

[goeasy123]

Can you give some specific examples? Not trying to put you on the spot here, just interested.

Yes. It depends on whether you want an answer to the pedagogical question or specific course content? Here's a bit of both. Apart from my aforementioned DS experience, which is about pedagogy. If I were an RYA instructor I would have told that person they need to find someone to spend a lot of time with then teaching them to operate a boat and that until they could operate a boat they shouldn't be attempting an exam oriented course.

If one wants to do a YM one needs significant qualifying experience. If the intent of the RYA syllabus is to insure safe sailing the most risky part, between DS and YM, of a persons sailing career is not covered.

Where is the course content that actually tells you how to sail a large cruising boat, basics like how to get the genny in a high winds, when to reef or what to do when your engine quits coming into port on a lee shore. Bear in mind there are lots of people that, these days, do not come up through the ranks or do not have sailing mates or family to call on. They don't know what they don't know. The RYA syllabus is lacking in this area.

On DS, what's the point of learning a one hour CTS method when you really need to know how to cross multiple tides. I was bewildered after the course until I saw a Youtube video of Patrick Laine crossing the Channel. There's a long thread on this forum were, apparently experience sailors, demonstrate their lack of understanding.

It's well understood that the human brain rarely remembers more than a few steps in a complex process. Forcing them to try to remember a long MOB procedure rather understanding the basic principles introduces risk. One very experienced instructor told us to remember just three things... 1. get someone to keep sight of the MOB, 2, know how to stop the boat quickly on any point of sail and 3. remember where you keep the sheet of paper (preferably laminated) that tells anyone on board what to do in plain language. I know that begs a question about what best practice might be, but the fact that an examiner told us, on a YM course, brings into question the thinking behind the course design.

He also told us to have sheets with all the VHF channels on it, the key radio procedures and a pre-departure check list. He was a ex SAR helicopter pilot. I'm a flight instructor. The ABSOLUTE rule in flying is use checklists. Even if you have 20 years experience flying passengers jets you must use checklists even if you can recite them verbatim.

For the same reason it is dangerous to rely on people remembering extensive lists of light configurations, nav markers and ColRegs to pass an exam and continue to remember them thereafter. Good pedagogy would be to get people to remember the really important stuff essential to respond to indeterminate dynamic conditions such as key parts of the ColRegs and the rest left to reference... but that doesn't make good course content you can charge people for.

I'll give you three examples from personal experienc of relevant situations. I have others:

1. While crossing the TSS in the Western Approaches our experienced YM skipper waited for over three hours for a gap with no ships in sight because he couldn't remember the rule on heading, didn't have reference material to hand and couldn't get mobile phone signal. Four recently qualified DS crew on board couldn't remember either.

2. An ab initio skipper of a yacht under sail, close hauled was hit by a ferry in the Ria de Vigo the year before last because he obeyed the ColRegs to the letter. The investigation deemed the yacht skipper at fault. A similar thing happened to me crossing the bay at Gib. A fast cat ferry came out from behind a tanker in a big arc. With less than a minute to contact I radioed him to check his awareness and ask his intentions. He proceeded to give me chapter and verse on how pleasure craft should give way to commercial traffic.... despite the fact I was close hauled under sail. So whatever the ColRegs actually say they, at least, don't apply to Spanish ferries.

3. A Lagoon recently sunk in the bay at Sant Carles in the dark because the chart plot failed and the skipper couldn't read the lights. It was grounded at least twice, once after a tow failed. The tow line was tied to the davits and the vessel tow backwards. If you know the bay at Sant Carles, which this skipper did, the safe thing to have done would be to have beach the boat and wait until daybreak.

 

[Daedelus]

There were two of us doing day skipper with two doing YM practice and exam and at the end of the first day we were very impressed with the speed with which the examiner got us to the pub and how he had nearly finished his first pint before the rest of us had even worked out whose round it was.

On my YM exam I was doing blind nav and asked crew to steer 300, spot on says crew, and after a while the increasingly plaintive queries of are you sure you're on 300 and repeated answers of on the nose, spot on etc, got the examiner to look at the compass and say to the helm, "No, you're not , you muffin, you're on 330." The crews reply of "Oh., I'm sorry, I haven't got my reading glasses on and I can't actually see the compass" led to everybody else collapsing in near hysterical laughter. When the examiner could speak for laughing he asked if the autopilot was working and switched to that.

 

[East Cardinal]

Firstly congratulations mmbamb1234 on exam pass.
Goeasy123 , I have done the YM coastal and ocean theory exams with the RYA and found their content
to be very good. Accompanied a friend on the coastal course for a bit of support and did the ocean as a
personal challenge.
Have read the reports on the practical exams here and have to say I think they cover a good spread of knowledge
required. Not personally done any of the RYA practical course but was a navigator and instructor ( RN ) many moons ago,
and from the op report seems he had a good fair and extensive examination of his skills.
You have to remember most participants in the RYA courses are doing them for pleasure. They are not 20 year olds
specifically picked and trained for HM forces or Merchant careers, and shouldn’t be treated as such.

 

[laika]

I don't recall ANY 'zero to hero' types with a Services ticket.

Why would anyone save up and pay for a 4 month course when they could get the taxpayer to do it or am I misunderstanding?

 

[zoidberg]

You're probably misunderstanding.

Services personnel pay personal taxes in the same way as everyone else.... well, almost everyone else. There's no scope for fiddling expenses or having lunch on the company every few days.

 

[laika]

You're probably misunderstanding.

Yes: your reply doesn't clarify what you mean here:

I don't recall ANY 'zero to hero' types with a Services ticket.

Why would anyone pay to do a zero to hero course if they had already got training in the services?

 

[RobbieW]

...The ABSOLUTE rule in flying is use checklists....

Having trained as an aircraft engineer, I'd suggest the use of checklists rather than memory is because the list may be modified in the light of experience. I've found that I remember where to look things up rather than think I know the answer, which seems the safer option.

 

[nortada]

Yes: your reply doesn't clarify what you mean here:

Why would anyone pay to do a zero to hero course if they had already got training in the services?

Think there are crossed wires here.

JSASTC was set up to provide, character building and leadership training, afloat, for service men and women. This training is conducted by a core of permanent staff of civil service skippers, who are yachtmasters. This permanent core is augmented by ‘guest’ serving skippers.

These guest skippers have to be qualified to command one of HM Sail Training Ships. Their level of qualification dictates the area they can sail; day skip, the Solent and over to Poole; coastal, within U.K. coastal waters from The Manacles to Beachy Head; yachtmasters could go foreign but for longer trips, Biscay etc. but they had to have an ocean endorsement and be supported by qualified crew.

These guest skippers could also complete ‘in house’ training for RYA qualifications. As all JSASTC shippers were required to conduct arduous training, in testing conditions, they had to be competent and safe, so the training and qualification could be of a higher order than that required by commercial organisations.

Whilst all of the skippers were volunteers many of the crews were people sent by their units were not.

That said, it was a super opportunity to sail a variety of boats, including Nic 55s and later British Steel Challenge boats all over the world at HM expense. I believe it was funded by the Navy Vote

 

[laika]

Think there are crossed wires here.

Indeed. My question was asking for clarification on:

I don't recall ANY 'zero to hero' types with a Services ticket.

I'm sure the joint services training is wonderful but that doesn't explain the above. I wouldn't expect anyone who had had joint services training to enrol on a "zero to hero" course because they wouldn't be starting as zeros. It seems obvious to me but Zoidberg seems to be suggesting it reveals something..

 

[zoidberg]

I'm not rising to the bait.... I think.