New sailor wanting to build up yacht miles in the UK

[andrewfinn]

Hello all,

I am a 27 year old ex dinghy racer and would like to get some more experience sailing yachts. In March 2020 I got 400 miles crewing experience on a 60ft Ketch off the coast of Mexico and loved the big boat sailing. I was supposed to go all the way to Panama on the boat and get 1500+ miles experience however I had to return to the UK because of COVID-19.
I would like to go onto doing my RYA Day skipper but would like to build up some sea miles first. I have looked online and there seems to be a lot of these 'mile building weekends' available with RYA schools but they run into the £100s for each weekend.

Does anyone know of a cheaper way to build up miles? Is there a community for people who help budding new sailors get some miles in? I would be happy to cover the cost of my food expenses and a bit more but i cannot afford multiple weekends of £200+ at an RYA school.

I understand that due to COVID-19 there may not be much right now but i just wanted to tap into the cruisers' forum knowledge to start with. I am currently living in Milton Keynes (UK) with easy access to Southampton and the coast.

Thanks,

Andrew

[Sos]

Have a look at Crewseekers
There may be other similar sites.

Maybe look for Facebook groups and offer your time?

[slug]

Also pass your name around yacht brokers

They are in contact and solving problems for owners

Other connections are sailmakers , marine insurance companies

A decent crew who has the free time to be free , is very valuable and hard to find

[dougweibel]

Offshore Passage Opportunities - www.sailopo.com - is another site connecting people for crew opportunities.

It will be interesting to see how the whole "bringing crew aboard" thing will be affected going forward.

[muttnik]

You can try posting on the ybw “crewing opportunities” sub forum:
https://forums.ybw.com/index.php?for...ortunities.62/
It doesn’t seem high volume but you may get lucky