BLUEMOMENT

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Hi Ditch and welcome to the forum.

Can't recommend any particular school down your way, but don't worry about the lack of paper re. your previous experience. Get yourself an RYA logbook and fill in the bit marked 'previous experience' with very rough dates /miles.

The minimum pre-course experience required for Day Skipper is 5 days living on board, 100 miles logged (in tidal waters for tidal courses) and 4 hours night sailing. You obviously have more than that and the school will not be worried about exact dates etc.

Not sure what the Nav course you refer to is - the Day Skipper Theory covers all the nav you need for Day Skipper, never heard of a separate navigation course.

I did all my "desk sailing" at the local night school, OK it takes a few weeks but it's an evening out each week and you get to meet sailors. I skipped the competent crew and just did the other two, day skipper and yachtmaster ocean I think they are called.

They should be starting again next month, check out the local adult education prospectus.

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day skipper and yachtmaster ocean I think they are called

Prob. YM Offshore - Ocean is mostly astro-navigation.

Yep that's the one, reducing sun sights with Aero Nav tables, it was fun but I never used it in anger, it was a night out each week though.

The weather stuff and passage planning was good too.

If you're in a hurry / on a budget, don't worry about the theory course at all. To do the practical course you don't have to have done a theory course, just be able to demonstrate that you have that knowledge. And the knowledge can be learnt easily enough from one of the excellent Day Skipper Theory books out there. The one I used was by, I think, Price and Ouvry(?). So spend a couple of weeks doing the book learning, then book yourself on a Dayskipper practical course for a week, and you're done.

Cheers
Patrick

I Think I'm going to do the day skipper at my local college. I'm not sure whether it covers both the practical and theory subjects though.

The dayskipper courses done as evening classes are "dayskipper theory", and finish with an exam which gives you a theory certificate. Dayskipper practical is one week (occasionally two weekends) on a boat fulltime with an instructor, who signs your practical course completion certificate at the end of the week. There's therefore actually no "exam" involved in dayskipper practical, more continuous assessment by the instructor (I've seen them take people asside and downgrade them to a "competent crew" certificate if they don't think they make the grade, so its not automatic!).

The same distinction applies further up the scale - Yachtmaster theory courses are often offered as evening classes (its the same theory for Coastal Skipper). But the practical certificates (which, IMHO, are the ones that really count) come from, in this case, 24 hours on a boat with an examiner (not instructor), who puts you through your paces. Often done, as I did it, in combination with a weeks sailing with an instructor beforehand to get you up to speed and conveniently provide a boat and crew, but doesn't have to be - its the 24 hours with the examiner that count. Again, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there's no need to have done the theory exam, provided you can demonstrate that you have that knowledge when it comes to the practical.

Hope that clarifies things for you!

Cheers
Patrick