1 Week ASA 101 to 114 or ?? RYA equivalent

[Stewie12]

Re Bondese. Ask the RYA

[HBrew]

I did a Yachmaster package with Yachtmaster sailing school in Cape Town and I highly recommend them. The fees are very reasonable and the instructors are competent. Also, you will lose your initial fear of big waves and learn respect for the ocean. I sailed 2,500 nm when I was there. I don’t know the current fees, but I guarantee they will be significantly lees than what you are quoting above.

They have various packages like their 6 week package which gets you to RYA coastal. You cannot go now as everything is in lockdown, but I imagine it will open up again soon - anyway, best to wait until Nov/Dec for the summer weather.

Finally, Cape Town is a great place to stay for a while 😀

Check them out http://https://yachtmaster.co.za/sailing-courses/6-week-rya-yachtmaster-coastal-package/

[muttnik]

Originally Posted by LittleWing77

Well, you would both have to have taken RYA Competent Crew - it's a prerequisite for doing Day Skipper.

That's not strictly true. The stated prerequisites for the practical (which you won't be asked for proof of) are 5 days, 100 miles and 4 night hours. The spirit of it is experience equivalent to comp crew and navigation and seamanship knowledge to the standard taught in the day skipper theory course. In practice I doubt any sailing school selling you a combined theory and practical course would boot you out for having skipped comp crew. There are plenty of people who have just started at dayskipper. That doesn't mean it's a good idea for you, your instructor or the other students: learning the basics on your dayskipper is not the way to get the best out of the course.

[sepharad]

I took the Shore based RYA Marine radio (SRC) course online. It was fine and quite doable.

I took the Practical sea based Day skipper in Gocek Turkey with Colin Jaquiss of Sunsea Yachting. The service was great, well thought out, completely hands on and practical. No question was too big or too small. He wants you to pass and will step up and work you through it.

I am STILL fighting with the RYA Shore Based Theoretical Day Skipper course. It is online and for me personally, having someone who knows their stuff to guide you through it, makes a huge difference. This is no fluff course. The navigation, charts, tides etc are kicking my butt.

Completely out of order, I took the RYA theoretical coastal skipper course From Rob At RUSailing in Lagos Portugal...BEFORE the lower level courses. Rob was great BUT, the RYA courses are no pushover and they are not going to pass you if you havn't got the material down. I didn't, and made it clear, Rob still welcomed me and taught me as much as I was capable of absorbing.

You need to be ready for the appropriate level. RYA Practical courses run like this:

Sailing skills 1
Sailing skills 2
Start Yachting
Competent Crew
Day skipper
Coastal skipper

The multi day-shore based course are:
Essential Navigation and seamanship
Day skipper shore based (theoretical)
Coastal skipper/Yachtmaster offshore theory
Yachtmaster ocean theory.

If you have basic knowledge of the rigging, pats of a boat ect start with Competent Crew. it is five days/three sets of 2 days/5 days non-consecutively in sets of three and two days.

If you are both already with the practical aspects of sailing, hands on, you can go direct to day skipper without a competent crew cert.

You can pick up the Radio License at home on lockdown

As to Day skipper, combining theoretical and Practical in a crunch course...seems way too much. If possible find a theoretical teacher unless you are super at self learning on a computer.

5 days for the practical is reasonable.

I don't think 5 days is near enough for the theoretical, but apparently others have managed it. It is 12 sections and I have spent 5 days on one section alone. Both literally and figuratively. I wish I had found a teacher led course.

They can send you a small book called RYA Yachtmaster Scheme, syllabus and logbook that outlines all of the courses in a building tree format.

[Mook1e]

Lol, thanks for the correction. I meant to say we may both take competent crew here in Germany before moving on to the ASA week course later.

Originally Posted by LittleWing77

Well, you would both have to have taken RYA Competent Crew - it's a prerequisite for doing Day Skipper. There are also other prerequisites for Day Skipper. Go to the RYA site and have a look.

To S/V Harmonie's point, it's NOT just a case of "take-a-course-get-your-certificate". The RYA is far, far more rigorous than that.

And finally, you two are too green to start off with a catamatan charter + Day Skipper course! You want your wife never to sail again?

Omigawd.
LittleWing77

[roland stockham]

A though for all dreamers. Think of all the skills you have developed for living successfully onshore, maintaining the house and grounds, maintaining the car, successfully holding down a job, surviving the morning commute, using medical services, ensuring the kids do well at school. Think how long you spent learning all that. Now imagine doing all that with no plumber, electrician, mechanic, teacher, nurse or doctor on tap. To successfully cruise in remote areas where there are few if any services you need to learn all those skills as well as how to safely sail the boat. Scratch to competent skipper is a 3-5yr intensive learning curve.

[Mook1e]

Originally Posted by HBrew

I did a Yachmaster package with Yachtmaster sailing school in Cape Town and I highly recommend them. The fees are very reasonable and the instructors are competent. Also, you will lose your initial fear of big waves and learn respect for the ocean. I sailed 2,500 nm when I was there. I don’t know the current fees, but I guarantee they will be significantly lees than what you are quoting above.

They have various packages like their 6 week package which gets you to RYA coastal. You cannot go now as everything is in lockdown, but I imagine it will open up again soon - anyway, best to wait until Nov/Dec for the summer weather.

Finally, Cape Town is a great place to stay for a while 😀

Check them out http://https://yachtmaster.co.za/sailing-courses/6-week-rya-yachtmaster-coastal-package/

Wow, that looks amazing. Thank you for that link! I'll show my wife. She would love that..now to find time off work

[Mook1e]

Originally Posted by roland stockham

A though for all dreamers. Think of all the skills you have developed for living successfully onshore, maintaining the house and grounds, maintaining the car, successfully holding down a job, surviving the morning commute, using medical services, ensuring the kids do well at school. Think how long you spent learning all that. Now imagine doing all that with no plumber, electrician, mechanic, teacher, nurse or doctor on tap. To successfully cruise in remote areas where there are few if any services you need to learn all those skills as well as how to safely sail the boat. Scratch to competent skipper is a 3-5yr intensive learning curve.

Yes, that fits perfectly into my timeline. 36 months from now, I intend to be retired from my second career and liveaboard cruising.
These certs are first steps. We fully intend to take many more steps to gather the skills we need over time. We've never been the type to stop learning or exploring the world, and that's exactly what we want for our retirement.

[Dennis Clarke]

If you are in Europe...check out Hamble School of Yachting...just finished Dayskipper course before I had to return because of the virus..but this school is well recognized, extremely professional and the level of instruction is second to none!

[contrail]

What the various ASA instructors have said on this thread is absolutely correct. Roland makes a good comparison with other life skills. I, too, am an ASA instructor, and I can tell you that I, and the school I work with, do NOT pass you until you are ready. Precisely for that reason, our classes are often longer than other schools, are usually customized for couples, and generally do whatever we can to provide the students with the chance to really understand the material, and then get the repetitions to be able to go out on their own, safely. But master the material? That is going to take a lot of practice! I agree with the other instructors that the best way is to do the various courses in separate bites. Unfortunately, the market inspires quite a few schools to rush through things. You might only get to dock once, for example, instead of for as many times as it takes to get it! This is described as a crash course or fast track or some other fancy name to justify it! And that's where some criticize the ASA standard for being insufficient. It is not, but some students demand that it be done quickly, and some schools, for commercial reasons, comply. And, that IS insufficient. I usually teach aboard a 46 foot cat. Recently I had a brash young guy who was selling his tech company, and who had never sailed, ask me to price a course that would give him 101, 103, 104, and 114 (in other words up through catamaran cruising) and prepare him for singlehanding a large cat, in the space of a week. He actually thought that he and I could do it. The conversation did not last long. But, I don't doubt there might have been another school that told him what he wanted to hear.

To the OP, do yourself and your wife, whom you want to enjoy this, the favour of taking enough time to learn what you will want to have learned. I don't know what you do for a living, but I bet you can't master much of it in a week, and in this case, we are talking about managing a complex, expensive, and potentially lethal machine called a sailboat, and all the systems thereon.

[muttnik]

Originally Posted by contrail

This is described as a crash course or fast track or some other fancy name to justify it!.

From the example you gave I believe what you're talking about is overlapping courses, ie taking 3x1-week courses in a single week.

The term "fast track" is used by UK and (from what I've seen) med-based RYA schools to apply to a series of courses run consecutively. Comp crew, dayskipper theory and dayskipper practical are normally 5 days each. Combined dayskipper theory and practical seem to be 9 days (presumably to fit into 1 week off work with two surrounding weekends?) and all three together 14 days.

It's a marketing term though so worth checking what's included by any particular school: a quick google shows some schools using "fast track dayskipper" to mean theory+practical, some theory+practical+comp crew, some comp crew + practical only with the idea that you'll have done VHF+theory beforehand.

While I completely agree with contrail's point about multiple simultaneous courses, I'm just highlighting that "fast track" when used by european schools is normally used differently and is not necessarily something to run away from.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by contrail

What the various ASA instructors have said on this thread is absolutely correct. Roland makes a good comparison with other life skills. I, too, am an ASA instructor, and I can tell you that I, and the school I work with, do NOT pass you until you are ready. Precisely for that reason, our classes are often longer than other schools, are usually customized for couples, and generally do whatever we can to provide the students with the chance to really understand the material, and then get the repetitions to be able to go out on their own, safely. But master the material? That is going to take a lot of practice! I agree with the other instructors that the best way is to do the various courses in separate bites. Unfortunately, the market inspires quite a few schools to rush through things. You might only get to dock once, for example, instead of for as many times as it takes to get it! This is described as a crash course or fast track or some other fancy name to justify it! And that's where some criticize the ASA standard for being insufficient. It is not, but some students demand that it be done quickly, and some schools, for commercial reasons, comply. And, that IS insufficient. I usually teach aboard a 46 foot cat. Recently I had a brash young guy who was selling his tech company, and who had never sailed, ask me to price a course that would give him 101, 103, 104, and 114 (in other words up through catamaran cruising) and prepare him for singlehanding a large cat, in the space of a week. He actually thought that he and I could do it. The conversation did not last long. But, I don't doubt there might have been another school that told him what he wanted to hear.

To the OP, do yourself and your wife, whom you want to enjoy this, the favour of taking enough time to learn what you will want to have learned. I don't know what you do for a living, but I bet you can't master much of it in a week, and in this case, we are talking about managing a complex, expensive, and potentially lethal machine called a sailboat, and all the systems thereon.

Originally Posted by Snore

Let me preface this with I am an ASA instructor.

A one week non-stop course is overload. The example I give folks is imagine being locked in the Louvre, Hermitage, or any other art gallery for 5 days, non-stop. Obviously, you could not appreciate all the art. Likewise 5 days of non-stop learning will be an overload.

A more effective learning regime is take a 2-day course, then sail something in your own. Take the next course and sail something. AFTER you can sail a mono-hull take the catamaran course. In the end you will be a better sailor than the person who did the one week crash course.

Originally Posted by belizesailor

Ive taught countless "combination class" (multiple classes in combination) over decades. They are popular because students want them and its good revenue for sailing schools, but it is not the ideal way to learn. I suggest taking a class or two, becoming comfortable with those skills on the water, and then taking the next class or two, repeat...

A week long series of 3 or 4 classes is an intense learning experiece (an intense teaching experience too!). This may prove overwhelming for your new to sailing wife. Ive had a few students who have decided just to audit the remainder of the training after they became overwhelmed.

Pre-class preparation is critical. Make sure the school you choose will get class materials to you well ahead of time so that you can prepare.

So...you've got at least 3 experienced sailing instructors telling you that combination classes (AKA "fast track") are not the most effective way to learn...might be worth listening to.

[muttnik]

Originally Posted by belizesailor

So...you've got at least 3 experienced sailing instructors telling you that combination classes (AKA "fast track") are not the most effective way to learn...might be worth listening to.

Is that aimed at me? It seems I mis-understood contrail's post because I'm not familiar with ASA courses: RYA courses tend to be 5 days so I assumed taking 4 courses in a week would involve taking them simultaneously. I see you mean they're 1-2 day courses and you're all saying don't do them back to back. My mistake. I cannot speak for ASA courses: Are they super-intensive compared to RYA?

For RYA courses I will respectfully suggest that different people learn in different ways and different people have different circumstances. From the point of view of dayskipper back-to-back makes a load of sense. Biggest pain for instructors? People showing up for a dayskipper practical not having done the theory or not having done basic sailing skills. A combined course works for the instructor because they don't have to "catch up" any students who have missed a pre-requisite (to the detriment of the other students). Running practical straight after theory works because you immediately start putting into practice what you just learned, thereby consolidating it while it's still fresh in your head. And what's not to like about teaching people navigation, colregs, passage planning etc. on top of basic crew skills so they know more about what's happening on a boat? Dayskipper is hardly that advanced.

If you want to say "intensive courses don't work" for more advanced qualifications....this could perhaps be a longer conversation but it's something I have personal experience of. It very effectively worked in changing my life and providing a solid platform on which to build all my subsequent experience.

I think the standard answer to "Intensive sailing courses don't work" is "Tell that to Dee Caffari".

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by muttnik

Is that aimed at me? It seems I mis-understood contrail's post because I'm not familiar with ASA courses: RYA courses tend to be 5 days so I assumed taking 4 courses in a week would involve taking them simultaneously. I see you mean they're 1-2 day courses and you're all saying don't do them back to back. My mistake. I cannot speak for ASA courses: Are they super-intensive compared to RYA?

For RYA courses I will respectfully suggest that different people learn in different ways and different people have different circumstances. From the point of view of dayskipper back-to-back makes a load of sense. Biggest pain for instructors? People showing up for a dayskipper practical not having done the theory or not having done basic sailing skills. A combined course works for the instructor because they don't have to "catch up" any students who have missed a pre-requisite (to the detriment of the other students). Running practical straight after theory works because you immediately start putting into practice what you just learned, thereby consolidating it while it's still fresh in your head. And what's not to like about teaching people navigation, colregs, passage planning etc. on top of basic crew skills so they know more about what's happening on a boat? Dayskipper is hardly that advanced.

If you want to say "intensive courses don't work" for more advanced qualifications....this could perhaps be a longer conversation but it's something I have personal experience of. It very effectively worked in changing my life and providing a solid platform on which to build all my subsequent experience.

I think the standard answer to "Intensive sailing courses don't work" is "Tell that to Dee Caffari".

Intended for the OP.

[Mook1e]

Thank you. I'm discussing our schedule with my wife and we will schedule RYA courses here in Europe in manageable chunks as we're able to travel.

Originally Posted by belizesailor

Intended for the OP.