The RYA and big boats vs Swallow Boats

[Canute]

A couple of months ago, I took an RYA yachtmaster exam on a 40 ft yacht and failed.  It was a marginal fail but a failure nevertheless and it hurt. Reasons given were that I did not use a preventer on a broad reach in changeable conditions, which was considered dangerous; and I forgot to maintain the log on the second day, which was just dumb. One or the other in isolation might have been ignored but taken together were too much for a pass.

I consider myself a good sailor on small boats and enjoy getting the most out of my BR20. Small boat sailing is extremely useful in learning how to sail and trim larger boats but I would say that it does not work the other way around.  The yachtmaster exam is exclusively about how competent and safe you are in a big boat.  Admittedly, you learn useful things like weather patterns, Colregs and non-electronic navigation but you can do that without taking exams.

Will I take the exam again? Probably, because I want to prove that I can do it.  However, I will do it differently, with lessons learned.  These include:
1. Make sure that you have confidence in your fellow examinee, for example by doing it with a competent friend.  My fellow examinee was a complete numpty who failed in spectacular fashion.  Amongst many transgressions, he gave up on the MOB retrieval under sail test because he had forgotten what to do.  He also did an accidental gybe during his exam (instant failure) and during my part of the exam could not be trusted at the helm for any period of time without doing something stupid, which was distracting to put it mildly.
2. Find out as much as possible about your examiner. Mine was not an inherently unfair person but I learned afterwards that there had recently been some harrumphing among the suits at RYA HQ about his letting standards slip, so he was probably reacting by being harsher than average.  He also used his mobile a lot during the exam and was garrulous, which was another distraction.
3. Go into the exam with open eyes.  Some sailing schools claim 100% pass rates.  Call me cynical, but this must surely be on the basis of one lucky candidate, as an examiner I know has failed over 75% of his yachtmaster candidates.  I may have been looking in the wrong place but I have been unable to discover the RYA average pass rate as they don't seem to publish it.  Why not? Standards are undoubtedly very much higher than they used to be and if you are going to spend a large amount on preparing for and taking an exam, you are entitled to know what your chances are.
4. Have loads of big boat experience.  If you are only used to small boats, you will be unprepared for the additional stresses of not being able to sail something by yourself and may be overwhelmed by the bureaucracy involved in every passage.  For example, did you know that you are required by the MCA and Annex 25 of SOLAS V, to formally assess your crew's competence for every passage and show that you have done so?  I didn't but if I had, my assessment would have been unprintable.
5. Get yourself a device that jabs you in the ribs every half hour to remind you to update the log.

You may have bought your Swallow Boat because you could not afford something bigger, or you may have bought it because you think small boats are more fun. If in the former category, do not look enviously at bigger boats.  You probably sail to forget the stresses of the day job and with a bigger boat you are swapping one set of stresses for another.  The heads have blocked again, an important piece of the rigging has parted company 20 ft up and the alternator has packed in.  The freshwater tank is leaking into the bilges, the fridge smells funny and the engine gear lever cable is threatening to jam in reverse. Enjoy the view as you ghost by in light airs in your Swallow Boat, ballast tank empty, and the bigger boat recedes aft, wallowing miserably in the swell.

As for the yachtmaster exam, only do it if you are chartering, if you insist on trading up to a bottomless money pit or you enjoy pointless challenges. Otherwise, buy the book and forget about the T-shirt.

[Jonathan Stuart]

Canute,

Welcome on board and thanks for sharing your experiences. That is all very interesting and no doubt reaffirms for many of us why Swallow Boats and their ilk make so much more sense than larger boats.

On a related note albeit at a tangent, what do people think is the appropriate RYA training for Swallow Boats owners? I have been messing about with boats for years but only skippering my own sailing boat for 3 years and have learned what little I know from experience (i.e. mistakes), books, websites and friends. I keep thinking that I should do some formal training, esp given that I don't know what I don't know. But would this be worthwhile and if so which courses are most relevant?

Jonathan

[Graham W]

what do people think is the appropriate RYA training for Swallow Boats owners? I have been messing about with boats for years but only skippering my own sailing boat for 3 years and have learned what little I know from experience (i.e. mistakes), books, websites and friends. I keep thinking that I should do some formal training, esp given that I don't know what I don't know.

Experience and mistakes in your own boat must be the surest way to remember what to do and what not to do.  You then have known knowns, to quote wotsisname.  I've done RYA courses and promptly forgotten virtually everything that wasn't directly relevant to sailing Turaco in my usual habitat, which probably means that I didn't really benefit that much.  Lights and shapes for vessels engaged in purse seining anyone?

Things may have changed since the previous millenium but the RYA courses that I took didn't actually teach me how to sail. At competent crew level, I was too busy flaking lines and tying bowlines to be allowed near the helm very often. After that, it was assumed that you had already absorbed your sailing trim techniques through osmosis. This is odd: if it was a driving school, it would be like teaching you that turning right at a roundabout is suboptimal while ignoring all that difficult stuff about depressing the clutch and using the brakes.

Apart from on this and the Drascombe forum, no-one seems to have anything to say about sailing a small yawl. No books at all and magazines have different preoccupations. So we are back to learning by experience, by making mistakes and by watching other Swallow Boats carefully. Raids and cruising in company are probably the best places of all to pick up knowledge.

[Canute]

The RYA classroom courses are the most useful, as you ought to be able to understand the Colregs and what the weather patterns mean.  Paper-based navigation is also very useful although I see in this month's Yachting Monthly (page 7) that the IMO has launched a five year plan to phase out paper charts for ships, to be replaced by back-up electronics.  Then on page 8, there is an article entitled "Is GPS jamming really a threat?" (answer yes).  Go figure!

I am really sceptical about the value of RYA practical courses for Swallow Boat owners.  The RYA has "Yachting" in its title and my BayRaider is a long way from being a yacht, thank goodness.  The RYA theory on the other hand can be picked up fairly cheaply in evening classes or correspondence courses or just by reading a book (Tom Cunliffe is always value for money).  The theory does however then need to be repeatedly applied in real life, otherwise it will just go down the same memory black hole as simultaneous equations and Henry VIII's third wife's name.

[Tony]

Small boat sailing is extremely useful in learning how to sail and trim larger boats but I would say that it does not work the other way around. 

Hi, Canute.
 Couldn’t agree more with your quote, above, but I wouldn't say that any small boat sailor wasted their money or time taking courses designed for AWBs.
 There is an analogy with road traffic.
“ If I ruled the world” no one would get a licence to drive a car until they had done a year’s apprenticeship  on a push bike, or at least a low powered moped. They’d learn good road sense and manners if nothing else.
I find the biggest threat to life when sailing –home or abroad - comes not from the sea (or from my own inadequacies) but from power boats in the 15-35 foot range.  Anything larger tends to have professional  crew and will  behave impeccably but the smaller stuff often hasn’t a clue about sailing boats in general and small sailing boats in particular. The following example is typical.  I was nearly swamped last summer by a friendly Italian guy circling repeatedly around me, making a miniature Maelstrom, at what he obviously considered a safe speed and distance, while his wife took photographs and he inquired about my boat’s origins. A final pass at 20 knots had us struggling to stay upright, bailing like fury, while he, without a backward glance to see the chaos, roared off into the distance.   Once UP and DOWN had resumed their normal relationship a  few observations on his own origins and  probable future destination were made over the VHF ( radio protocol ignored in the heat of the moment ) but he was probably tuned into the Greek equivalent of Radio 1 rather than Ch 16.

You can learn a lot from a good course but there is no better teacher than practical experience - as the RYA training structures recognise. (.....but where sailing and road-craft are concerned perhaps the adage that “ What ever doesn’t kill you makes you strong”  is best avoided. )

Where retaining what you have learned is concerned, the idea that trauma etches experiences deeply into the memory – a concept much favoured by my school teachers and their Rattan canes back in the 50s and 60s – has been replaced with the theory that certain events (pleasant or un pleasant) are returned to time and again - and it is this repetition that develops the neural pathways that constitute memory. It also explains why we forget the "big boat" stuff that doesn't apply to our Swallow Boats and why memories can evolve over time into something that bears no resemblance to the original events – a good reason for more RYA refresher courses, perhaps, and another qualifying session on a push bike for car drivers.
I certainly think that my Italian friend would benefit from some time in a dinghy!

(Photo shows one of the "impeccably behaved" variety. )

[Graham W]

I had to look up AWB. Not, as you might expect, Australian Wheat Board, but Average White Boat.

Anything that I might have said about RYA courses does not apply to owners of fast motorboats in the size range that Tony mentions and as for jetski owners, don't get me started.

Last time I checked, my neural pathways were clogged with weeds.

[Tony]

......and as for jetski owners, don't get me started.

I just LOVE Jet ski riders  !!! 

Absolutely nothing like them for bringing a whole harbour full of strangers together in common cause.  They provoke the same sort of reaction as you’d get from a 650cc Trail bike ridden down the escalator in a branch of John Lewis. 

As for the machines themselves – I’m sure they are very useful for towing surfers out to catch waves off an Hawaiian beach and no doubt a great deal of fun, but the main point of owning one for some seems to be to perform aquatic doughnuts for the benefit of shore-based admirers.
“Look Ma! No hands!”
Hmmm .  I might even consider getting one myself. I am, after all, rapidly approaching  (or already in, depending on which of my daughters you are speaking to) my second childhood. 

[Canute]

My main argument against big boat RYA courses for small sailing boat owners is that the cost and time expended in relation to benefits gained could be better spent elsewhere.

A 5-day day skipper course is around £500 while the coastal exam prep course plus the exam itself is about £700.  By contrast, day skipper theory with a correspondence school is £275 and Cunliffe's yachtmaster book is £17.50.

[Canute]

My main argument against big boat RYA courses for small sailing boat owners is that the cost and time expended in relation to benefits gained could be better spent elsewhere.

Despite my own arguments, I took the Yachtmaster again recently and passed it this time.  Excellent crewmates, a different examiner (firm but fair, with a pass rate of around 50%) and a little more experience with big boats on my part but not that much more.  I'm still trying to work out how I can use what I learned  to good effect with my BR.