I just dont have a certificate with sailing written on it. My wife has occasionally talked about a flotilla holiday before our son gets too old, but for various reasons now unlikely to happen, when I have asked the charter companies they are happy to accept a day skipper sailing or ICC but my yacht master offshore (power) isn't together with my RN BWC, ONC, FNOC all done in the days on trad navigation methods before GPS. We've had our own yacht for 6 years and I have done a fair few miles, including three RTIR races. Someone I know with a DS cert who is allowed to charter a yacht in the Mediterranean once asked if it was safe for me to sail at night as his DS didn't allow. I could go and do the ICC but that would expire in 5 years against the DS Cert which I believe runs in perpetuity. That hopefully explains why I dont have the appetite to do a DS.
The ICC renewal is just a paperwork exercise, no further testing or currency requirements
If you don't think you would gain anything from DS course, then it feels like your options are CS course (which you may or may not think worthwhile either) or the ICC. It will need renewing (paying fee, not retesting) every 5 years - current price is less than about 1/8th of the typical cost of a DS course... so unless you plan to charter for over 40 years its not ecconomic sense unless you think you will learn stuff.
My daughter did CC when she was about 12. We were warned before that sometimes kids that age just don't get it, if she didn't do what was required she would still get the "start yachting" certificate. In the end she was absolutely fine, but I can see how a reluctant partner dragged along, or someone who really has no intention to sail again and so no interest in learning could "fail". The critical things seemed to be the ability to get back to a MOB - some people apparently lack the confidence to do that.
Interesting - it seems to be relatively common practice. Why are their competitors not making a fuss if some are complying with a policy and others not? Or is "crystal clear" actually something vague like "should not normally" or "will be harder to deliver"?
Perhaps but the content for CC and DS is rather different and those are routinely combined. I can see that delivering a "combined" CS, DS and CC course to people with marginal experience requirements would be particularly challenging, but if the other candidates are not as green as that then I can't see any reason the CS can't still fit in the content. Personally I think it may give a BETTER learning experience (for the CS) with one CS and some relative novices rather than 5 CS on the boat with at any one time the other 4 candidates all being crew.
I think it shows a problem with the whole "minimum hours experience" thing - you can spend 50 hours on a boat occasionally pulling a bit of string when told to, 5 hours executing a complex passage with pilotage tacking etc, or 30 minutes sailing a boat onto a mooring after an engine failure and the former has filled up his log book a lot more than the others but learned nothing!
This is from the RYAs Instructor Handbook, there's no leeway I can see.
They do also say "Candidates are expected to have prior boat handling expertise to the standard of the RYA Day Skipper practical qualification. This ensures you have a solid foundation of sailing skills before undertaking the Coastal Skipper course."
Useful if you want to charter a boat and sail at night.
Interesting it seems to conflict with RAHs view - without seeing the text that explains the usage of the table it is a bit of a guess but I’ll take your word for it. The question then is what does the RYA overlook it?
Yes I am aware, but of course 2 days (or even 6) skippering a flotilla yacht in the med with experienced other sailers are quite different from singlehanding which is different from sailing with relative beginners. You could actually complete the coastal skipper course and never have spent a night at anchor. I think it’s theoretically possible to do the whole thing only entering and leaving the same marina - perhaps the same one people have used for all their prior experience…
Yes I 100% agree, you could have two candidates do exactly the same stuff 1 week apart and get very different experience based on the people and the weather. I don’t have any simple answers but it’s clear that for dinghy and powerboat instructors (possible others) we have pre-assessment to assess capability with core skills. In other qualification worlds you often need to build a “portfolio” - essentially a glorified log book, but if you actually needed to submit real details (logs, gps tracks, photos, passage plans) people might be (a) more honest about their experience (b) diverted to specific pre-course prep. Of course not trivial to implement - and it depends whether clueless people are the anomalies that make the interesting stories or a frequent problem.
Untitled by Rival Sailor, on Flickr
@wonkywinch your examples are exactly what I was trying to suggest. Glad to say I knew those two routes intimately too
For sure there's value in learning from other experienced people, but I do think it's essential somewhere along the way to practice directing novice crew. Experienced people might politely ignore small imprecisions and inaccuracies in your instructions if they already know what you "meant to say"; and working with novices is essentially informal teaching and a whole skillset in itself.