Yachtmaster Ocean Exam

[Laurin]

Hi,

Anybody got any advice on YM Ocean Exam (Interview not theory). Have submitted required sights and am now nervously awaiting oral exam on Saturday.

Cheers

 

[stephenh]

relax... given that your sights are OK and you have your Exam Theory certificate it is , as you say, an interview.
They can be keen on compass checks and might question you on the safety gear etc. that you carried, but other wise it will ( probably) be a general discussion.
Don't forget your (current) 1st Aid cert. !!
Good luck
Let us know how you get on.

 

[Doug_Stormforce]

Relax, this is not an exam its just a friendly chat about a trip you have done. If you genuinally did the passage then there is no other preperation to do. He will only ask you questions about what you did, and wont fail you if did things wrong.

Sights you have obviously done already, compass check may appear but generally its just a chat about your qualifying passage.

 

[snowleopard]

Not sure you can rely on it being a fireside chat. My examiner asked me quite a bit about passage planning. He gave me a passage to St Helena & asked me what I needed to take into consideration when planning it- routing, provisioning, crew selection, equipment etc. You might like to think about water consumption, crew fitness, emergency equipment etc. He may also want to ask about the day's work which you sent him before the exam. My qualifying passage was an OSTAR so I came in for a bit of stick about singlehanders and watchkeeping.

He won't ask you things covered by the Offshore certificate.

 

[tome]

If you hold the shorebased completion certificate then it's just a chat, otherwise it's an oral exam.

 

[snowleopard]

Don't count on it !

 

[tcm]

ooh, instead of a fireside chat might it be a full-scale row, i wonder?

 

[tome]

Too late!

 

[bilbobaggins]

The Examiner is entitled to 'ask questions on any part of the syllabus'. I took that to mean everything and anything from 'Parts of a Yacht' to 'Sun's Amplitudes' and 'Changing Magnetic Declination With Latitude'. It's his judgement and standards he has to satisfy with his questions and, if he feels there are holes in your know-how and approach, he'll pick at them until he judges he knows what standard you're at. He'll also be keen to identify where you are well up-to-speed. That's the point of a 'viva'. And that's as it should be.

Don't be late. I was - by an hour - and the glower almost turned me to stone. But things warmed up when I produced the 'Pelorus' I'd made from bits of spare frigate I had lying around.. He then produced his, and we compared ideas for a while, until he decided it was tea-time.

 

[john_morris_uk]

I agree - I was quizzed for a couple of hours.

On the other hand it might have been because I vaguely knew the examiner and he knew I was already an offshore examiner and he wanted to be shown to be whiter than white and not giving a tick in the box exam pass! Scrupulously fair, and I still got a question wrong... (direction of deviation correction was backwards, since I'd done a compass check with the sun setting astern. I had applied the correct correction, but forgot that when the vessel turns round, the deviation curve will almost certainly be opposite...!)

 

[dulcibella]

Mine was more the chat than the ordeal. He asked me about my ideal boat spec for world cruising, then asked me what unexpected problems had arisen, how we had dealt with them, and what we would do differently next time.

 

[Laurin]

Thanks for all the help guys... seems it's a lot like YM offshore in that there is big variation between examiners.... hope I get a nice one

 

[john_morris_uk]

I don't like the idea of there being a big difference between examiners. This certainly isn't planned for and I suspect that the (apocryphal) stories are more about peoples perception of the exam process and how stressful they found it than the reality. People are prepared in different ways and react in different ways - perhaps this explains some of the differences in the way they feel they were handled.

I would rather think that examiners reacted according to the candidate they had before them. For example, when I examine people it depends on how they do things as to what problems/situations they get asked to do next... For example in a practical YM exam, if one is concerned about a particular aspect of boat handling, one might contrive a situation that will test the candidate a little more - to find out whether what they did was skillfully thought out and executed or not...

Hopefully your experience of the YM Ocean process will be similar. If you know your stuff, its a doddle. If you are obviously weak in an area, expect a little more questioning...

 

[Laurin]

Just to let you all know... I passed! Thanks for all the advice

 

[john_morris_uk]

Congratulations! Well done! Hope that you enjoyed the process as well as feeling good about it afterwards...

 

[Koeketiene]

So what was it?

Walk in the park, just a chat - or the Spanish Inquisition?

 

[stephenh]

Well done you ...I hope it wasn't too much of a trauma..

 

[Guest]

Silly Question to Bilbobaggins ??

But weren't you an Examiner / Teacher for RYA Dayskipper, YM and Offshore .....

Maybe I got it wrong ?

No disrespect meant ....
/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[tome]

Well done I think only about 10% offshores go on to do the ocean YM

 

[Laurin]

Exam was somewhere between the two.. not a walk in the park but certainly not an inquisition. Learned absolutely loads and was actually thinking during the exam that if I failed it was still money and time worth spent for what I learned during the 2 1/2 hours. (like how to navigate across the atlantic with a breadboard!)