RYA Training

[tomsit]

I'm after some recommendations of places for doing some RYA training, preferably in the south east of England but would be willing to go further afield if worthwhile.

At the minute it would be for myself and the missus to do the RYA competent crew course, probably doing it over several weekends. We are hoping to get a feel for whether we enjoy it and we will see where we go from there. I have sailed dinghy's many years ago as a kid - not that I can remember any of it, SWMBO has no experience and I thought the competent crew course would hopefully be a good insight.

Thanks in advance.

[flyingjase]

Me & the Mrs did a Start Yachting weekend with www.adrenalinesailing.co.uk back in 2007

As far as I can tell (novice sailors et al) the course was good. We sailed over to the Isle of Wight (pretty standard stuff I understand) and did all the man overboard drills etc.

They then signed my log book which enbaled me to charter (with fellow PHer Hard-drive) a Bavaria 40 (from memory) off Sardinia

Adrenline sail from Gosport if that is any good for you as a location.

[telford_mike]

I did a course (Day Skipper) and the kids did Comp Crew at the Island Cruising club in Salcombe last summer. Really nice area, great boat and fantastic instructor.

http://www.icc-salcombe.co.uk/RYACourses.aspx

[Snoggledog]

This lot do a range of RYA courses. Come to that so do this bunch

Sorry but I'm a bit derisive towards RYA courses

[telford_mike]

Snoggledog][url said:

Sorry but I'm a bit derisive towards RYA courses

Why? Is there any alternative if you want to get an ICC for chartering etc?

[Snoggledog]

telford_mike said:

Snoggledog said:

Sorry but I'm a bit derisive towards RYA courses

Why? Is there any alternative if you want to get an ICC for chartering etc?

For day skipper through to ocean master the RYA seem to offer good courses, but I've never been impressed with the courses for dinghy sailing.

I used to be a RYA instructor and disagreed with what the courses where offering and how they were delivered. I'm not saying that I know or even can do better but I know of a lot of people who felt that the beginners through to racing courses didn't give them what they hoped for.

[telford_mike]

Snoggledog said:

I used to be a RYA instructor and disagreed with what the courses where offering and how they were delivered. I'm not saying that I know or even can do better but I know of a lot of people who felt that the beginners through to racing courses didn't give them what they hoped for.

Fair one. Although I've been pretty pleased with my RYA yacht stuff, my OH has done RYA dinghy 1 and 2 a couple of times now and still hasn't really got the hang of it all. I sometimes think that the modern high performance boats don't help. Everything happened a lot more slowly in the wooden Cadets and Mirrors that I learned in when I was a kid.

[Snoggledog]

telford_mike said:

Snoggledog said:

I used to be a RYA instructor and disagreed with what the courses where offering and how they were delivered. I'm not saying that I know or even can do better but I know of a lot of people who felt that the beginners through to racing courses didn't give them what they hoped for.

Fair one. Although I've been pretty pleased with my RYA yacht stuff, my OH has done RYA dinghy 1 and 2 a couple of times now and still hasn't really got the hang of it all. I sometimes think that the modern high performance boats don't help. Everything happened a lot more slowly in the wooden Cadets and Mirrors that I learned in when I was a kid.

Rightly or wrongly, I think there's too much emphasis on little models / graphics of boats tacking / gybing with sails set at different angles. Until someone has actually experienced what it's like to sail with the sails set incorrectly they can't see or feel why it's the way it is.
One case in point when I was teaching youngsters went something along the lines of..

Pick a low wind day and get them to set the boats up on a run.

1 boat has the sails set all the way out.
1 boat has the sails set half way out.
1 boat has all the sails pulled tightly in.

Which one gets to a point (my rescue boat) 100m away first?

So at the post sail debriefing they were asked which one was faster, why was it faster and was there any downside to sailing the other ways. The kid in the boat who's sail was set on a beat found that he kept on gybing and going very slowly. The one who's sails were set half way found that speed wasn't there. The one who had the sails correctly set was happy as he'd won the 'race'.

I encouraged them to think about what they were doing and why.

I got a right bking by the on site RYA chief coach as my methods didn't follow 'correct procedures'. The upshot though is that one of the kids eventually ended up going for the Yngling Olympic trials. (She came 3rd iirc). Another is a handy Merlin Rocket sailor and another is doing fairly well at club level in Ok's. After the spat (the last of many) from the Chief Coach, I gave up teaching.

Also I feel that (in some cases) there are too many processes to follow using the RYA way. For example righting a capsized boat. At this point I agree that the RYA method is safe but there are times when people can't follow a safe method. (Like when a crew member is trapped under the sail. Who's going to throw the jib sheet over the side for the person on the centre board to pull on?)

Not sure that I wholly agree with you about the performance boat aspect of learning. I learned to sail in International 14's from the age of 8 and was trapezing from the age of 10. The nice thing about a lot of modern boats is that they recover 'dry'. The downside is that as the bouyancy is built into the sides they're more likely to turtle and usually float 'high' out of the water making it difficult to get on the board.