RYA Costal skipper in UK - recomm. pls

[radu dumas]

Ahoy,

I kindly ask for an advice in a couple of sections. To provide a context, me and my partner are holiday sailors, based in Romania, chartering boats for 1-2 weeks per year in the Med. I got a RYA day skipper license 6-7 years ago and my partner has a Romanian issued sailing license. We are in the very early phase (aka saving) for a more sea oriented life.

We consider going through the Costal skipper training in UK.

First question is related to the value added of the program. Is this something that will improve within a decent range our practical knowledge?

Second question is about location. We want UK as an opportunity to deal with some more challenging conditions (or at least more complex than the usual Med, including tides, weather, etc) under supervision. Is choosing UK a good idea? Is any sailing area in the UK that is best in the above context (including the presence of good RYA training centers) and that you will recommend?

Third question is if you either can recommend a company offering this training or a way to select/choose one. Any first hand info will be very welcomed. I don't know if this is allowed in the forum, but maybe some criteria can be shared and steps to make a choice.

The last question is an auxiliary one: if we decide that after the training we want to spend an additional week chartering a boat on our own, this time as tourists oriented, looking for nice nature and surroundings with a British country side touch, which sailing area will you recommend?

thanks in advance and fair winds!
Radu

[muttnik]

Hopefully you're familiar with the pre-requisites:
https://www.rya.org.uk/courses-train...l-skipper.aspx

...noting that the yachtmaster shorebased course comes before this practical course on the RYA's "ladder" so you should both really do that (online?) before coastal skipper if you haven't already

and course description...

https://www.rya.org.uk/newsevents/e-...all-about.aspx

I can't give personal experience of this course because it didn't used to exist when I did my RYA training but it does fill the void which *used* to exist after dayskipper and before the yachtmaster exams but as you don't seem to have many replies I'll try and address some of the other questions.

If you're going to travel to the UK for training, choose the solent: the stretch of water with lymington, southampton, the hamble river and postsmouth to the north and the isle of wight to the south. This is pretty much the centre of british yachting and you'll find many sailing schools and every technical challenge.

You'll find various recommendations for schools in this subsection of the forum where people have asked similar questions.

For the last question...you could happily potter round the solent for a week as a tourist practicing what you learned and visiting the remaining picturesque spots. The other place I'd look at is the west country, particularly the stretch of coast from Torquay to the Helford river. Plymouth probably has the best combination of accessibility by rail and availability of yacht charter.

Good luck!

[Yellowtulip]

As muttnik says, the Solent area or the South West are excellent choices for having numerous sailing schools. The tides and variable weather and variations in harbour entrances, rivers with bars etc. will give you a good test.
It's difficult to recommend a particular sailing school over others because most of us only ever experience one or two. There is a large subjective element, too. Some people just don't 'click' with some instructors. My last course was undertaken with an instructor privately, not through a school.

[Time2Go]

Shearwater Sailing School
Woolverstone Marina
Ipswich

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