RYA/MCA Yachtmaster Coastal/Offshore Sail Prep Week

An RYA Yachtmaster Certificate of Competence is often the ultimate aim of aspiring skippers. It is a well known, highly respected qualification worldwide, proving your experience and competence as a skipper.

We provide 5 tailor-made training days to prepare you for the exam, for which we allow an additional 2x days directly after your training.

Weather on Courses: When training on our vessels, we are always subject to environmental conditions. Some courses can be more affected than others. We are based in the UK, therefore we are subject to the vagaries of British weather. On any given week or weekend, we can have no wind, too much wind, fog, too much sun, snow – sometimes they all happen on the same day….

On sailing courses wind is the key issue. Therefore there is a rare chance that you may not sail every day. If we can sail safely, we will. In high winds, luckily, Plymouth is a very sheltered harbour from most wind directions, therefore we can often get to shelter and then sail in those areas within our very large harbour and rivers. Please also bear in mind that if we cannot sail, we will cover theory subjects as all RYA practical courses still have approximately 30% theory in the course which we normally break up into chunks throughout the week/weekend, but we may save them for the windy/no wind/foggy times.

In extremes: There are also those weekends or weeks when the weather is simply diabolical and we get a week of Force 9-10’s when we may just call and stop the course, usually beforehand if it is well forecast. More often than not we get a day or so of poor weather and work around it.

All courses: On all courses our aim is to complete the course in the safest way possible, covering all the theory and practical elements. We are not able to guarantee courses will have practical sessions on every day as we will work around the weather forecast.

Course Content: There is no fixed syllabus for this course but we try to focus on areas that you need to work on, and that the examiners tend to look at during the exam. For example:

• Skippering Skills

• Boat Handling

• Seamanship

• Navigation

• Safety Awareness

• IRPCS

• Meteorology

• Signals

Costs include accommodation, all meals whilst onboard (if as a group you opt to dine out one night, this will be at your own expense), mooring fees, use of waterproofs if required.

Exam fee is not included.

Optional Extra: G158 RYA Logbook

Duration: 5 Days (+2 days for exam)

Previous Experience: VHF/SRC licence, Valid and In-Date First Aid (please check the RYA website for accepted First Aid certificate information)

Coastal- 30 days, 2 days as skipper, 800 miles, 12 night hours (halved if you hold the Coastal Skipper course completion certificate). Half the sea time must be in tidal waters.

Offshore- 50 days, 5 days as skipper, 2500 miles, 5 passages over 60 miles including 2 as skipper and 2 overnight. Half the sea time must be in tidal waters
Assumed Knowledge: Navigation to Coastal/Yachtmaster Theory level.