You don’t need any qualifications to sail around the United Kingdom. Yes, you heard me correctly, you don’t need to be a qualified skipper to sail in the waters around the United Kingdom.

The catch is: you need your own boat!

If you’re like me, you probably can’t afford to buy and maintain a comfortable modern family-size yacht. The costs don’t stop once you’ve bought a yacht mooring, insurance and maintenance costs keep coming. You have to be a dedicated yachtie to enough use to justify the cost.

A more sensible approach is to charter a yacht when you need it, and to do that you will need to qualify as a skipper.

Lucky for us in the UK we have the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) originally started in 1875 when sailor caps and infeasibly large walrus moustaches were required sailing apparel. The RYA is the national governing body for pretty much every form of water cruising and sail racing.

The RYA has created a series of courses that can take someone that is totally inexperienced to a fully qualified Day Skipper in 2 weeks, although most people do it in a more leisurely way!

The main courses leading to the are:

What can you do with a RYA Day Skipper qualification?

Well, I am glad you asked! The Day Skipper qualification is accepted by most charter companies in the Solent area for sailing around the Solent (in known waters). That’s assuming you did your qualification in the Solent.

But the real bonus is that your new shiny Day Skipper qualification is accepted by pretty much every charter company in the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean is a nice place to practice sailing after qualifying. It is not tidal, so there are no currents or heights of tides to worry about. So you can practice those manoeuvring, anchoring and mooring skills without worrying about the effect of tides. And there are some fantastically beautiful places to sail, the water is warm in Summer, so just jump off the boat to go swimming.

A bonus is that if you hold an RYA Day Skipper certificate, you can also apply for the ICC. It is simply a form to fill in and submit back to the RYA. The ICC or International Certificate of Competence proves the holder is a competent skipper to the internationally agreed standard. It has been adopted by a few countries, including :

• Austria
• Belgium
• Croatia
• Denmark
• Finland
• Germany
• Greece
• Ireland
• Italy
• Malta
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey

In all other cases, foreign-flagged boat skippers are required to have the licence required by the vessel’s flag state.

In practice, it is very rare to be asked to produce the ICC, especially on holiday chartered vessels. I’ve sailed in the Mediterranean a few times with no ICC and I’ve never been asked for certificates. I would recommend checking the situation with the charter company before you travel.

Note: Since publication it has come to light that some port authorities in Greece are no longer accepting Day Skipper as a valid sailing qualification. As with most of sailing, conditions change, and regulations change, so it pays to check at the time before you travel.

For more information check the RYA’s site: https://www.rya.org.uk/knowledge/abroad/icc/evidence-of-competence-abroad

Sailing Qualification Courses

So what are the courses and what do you have to do on the courses?

Sailing Experience

This is not really a course, it is more a weekend of fun on a yacht! It is meant to be a taster for you to discover if you like sailing. You are normally part of a crew of 6 people with a fully qualified training skipper in control. You will learn what the pointy bit and the blunt end of a boat are called, (bow and stern by the way), and lots of other seafaring terms you can impress your friends with! The yacht will probably moor overnight somewhere and you can experience sleeping on the boat and have the delight of being rocked to sleep by the movement of the yacht in the water.

Competent Crew

So, you’ve done the sailing experience weekend and now you have a real taste for the sea. Things are now getting real! The next step is to do the Competent Crew course. This is a 5-day course that teaches you all the essential skills needed to be an active member of the crew. At the end of it, you will be able to tie up a yacht, helm, put sails up, know the difference between tack and gybe, and be able to say ‘arrrgh!’ like a real sailor!

Day Skipper

OMG! Now you are fully committed! This 7-day course is split into two: you spend 2 days in the classroom to learn how to navigate and highway code for the sea, then you spend 5 days sailing yay! You will use all the information you learned in the classroom and put it into practice on the yacht. You will learn and practice all elements of being able to manage a yacht and its crew.

The theory course has two main sections:

• general boat knowledge and navigational equipment
• navigation using charts — plotting a course to steer and estimated position
• knowledge of tides
• weather forecasting
• collision regulations and safety

The practical part of the course is putting what you learnt in the theory into practice:

• Sailing on different points of sail
• Man overboard drill
• Plotting and sailing on a course to steer
• Estimating your position from observations
• Close handling of the boat including mooring

That’s it, after you get your Day Skipper practical certificate you are now able to hire yachts from UK charter companies. The catch is that you can only sail in ‘known waters’, so the waters you have trained in.

The other positive is that you can now hire yachts from most yacht charter companies in the Mediterranean. The reason that you can hire anywhere in the Med and not anywhere in the UK is due to the UK waters being very tidal. The Med isn’t tidal and so is a lot easier to sail. Also, the weather is a lot more consistent in the Med and not as changeable as in the UK.

If you really get hooked and want to sail more and further afield, you can continue and do the Coastal Skipper qualification.

Coastal Skipper

Now you’re getting serious. After getting your Day Skipper and spending some quality time on the water crewing and skippering on yachts (you need about 300 miles, some as skipper), you can take your Coastal Skipper qualification. This is in 2 parts: the first part is the theory course (this can be done online or in the classroom), and the second part is a 5-day practical course.

The theory course has sections on:

• navigation using charts
• estimating tidal streams
• estimating tidal heights
• navigation aids
• pilotage
• passage planning
• meteorology
• collision regulations and safety
• protection of the environment

Once you pass your theory test, you can then do the Coastal Skipper practical course and test. This is a 5-day course doing lots of sailing. The instructor does an assessment of your boat handling skills over a series of fairly informal tests.

The things they will have you doing are:-

• Sailing on different points of sail.
• A morning of plotting courses and sailing them, under sail of course!
• An afternoon of Man Overboard drills both under sail and under power
• Mooring a yacht under power in different ways. You will moor the yacht on finger berths forward and reverse. Ferry gliding into a position between 2 other boats.
• Picking up mooring balls under sail
• Plot a whole day’s passage and then sail it. We sailed round the Isle of Wight.

Once you have your Coastal Skipper certificate you can hire a yacht anywhere around the UK. I can tell you there are some amazing places to sail around the UK!

More Advanced Qualifications

The Coastal Skipper qualification is probably the only qualification you need if you want to charter yachts for holiday day cruising in coastal waters anywhere in the world.

You may get ‘bitten by the bug’, and decide to sail on longer passages or maybe cross oceans and do more extreme sailing, or you may want to make a career out of sailing. For this, the RYA provide advanced sailing qualifications leading up to the full Yachtmaster Ocean qualification. Here is a rough breakdown of the quals:

Yachtmaster Coastal

If during your sailing up to now you have developed a taste for more adventurous sailing, you could refine your skills with the more advanced Yachtmaster Coastal qualification. The qualification proves that you are a very capable skipper and can command a yacht on long coastal passages.

Yachtmaster Offshore

From the Yachtmaster Coastal, the next step is the Yachtmaster Offshore qualification, this proves that you can command a yacht on offshore passages of up to 150 miles from a safe harbour.

Yachtmaster Ocean

The last qualification in this programme is the Yachtmaster Ocean qualification. Before you attempt the practical, you will need to complete the compulsory Yachtmaster Ocean Theory course. This qualification proves that you can command a yacht on passages of any length, and on ocean crossings anywhere in the world. This is also a professional qualification, which means with a commercial endorsement you could work professionally within the marine industry as a skipper. So, it could be a career change too!

Where Can You Get Trained

There are over 2400 RYA training centres countrywide in the UK that provide training courses in various formats.

The most usual learning format for practical courses on the boat is: Students share the boat with other students that are at different stages of their sailing experience. Everyone is in the same boat, literally. Everyone wants to learn, so students help and support each other during the course. During the day, students take it, in turn, to prepare lunch for everyone and there is usually the obligatory tea and coffee making. On multi-day courses, students usually sleep on board and have the option of cooking meals on board or going to a nearby pub or restaurant for an evening meal.

When you are just starting your learning path, it is very helpful to have other more experienced crew around you to help and explain things. When you are training to be a Day Skipper it helps to have people at different levels of competence to practice your delegation and people management skills.

A Stage at a Time

There are 3 stages to get to the Day Skipper qualification and I highly recommend doing this one stage at a time, especially if you are not sure it is for you. I tried the Sailing Experience weekend with my 2 sons. One of them was a bit too young and didn’t like it. The eldest went on and did the Competent Crew qualification with me. I then went on to do the Day Skipper qualification on my own. This worked out perfectly for us because we all took the level that we were comfortable with.

Theory Classroom or Online

There are several companies providing online courses for the Day Skipper Theory and the Yachtmaster Theory. These are great, there are lots of videos and examples, and they all provide instructor support via email. These are great if it takes you time to learn and absorb the information. The classroom approach is great if you want to dedicate a short space of focussed time to learning. There is on-hand face-to-face instructor support and it is a great way to get quickly up to speed without the distractions at home. I did the Day Skipper theory as classroom learning, it meant that I could do the theory part and then quickly get out on the water and apply it practically while the information was fresh in my head. It worked out well.

I took the Yachtmaster Theory as an online course and took just over a year to complete it, with all the distractions and demands at home. This also worked out well for me, there is a lot more information to absorb in the Yachtmaster Theory, compared to the Day Skipper Theory. So, it made sense to take time over it and practice really tough subjects like secondary port tide height calculations!

Fastrack

There are a few training centres that provide fast-track courses to Day Skipper. If you are certain that sailing IS for you, then this is the quickest way to get qualified.

Also, it is possible to fast-track training to Coastal Skipper and Yachtmaster qualifications. I would not recommend this unless you are aiming to do this professionally. The reason is that it takes time as a skipper of your own yacht to master all the skills of managing a yacht. The level of competence required to pass the higher level qualifications are quite strict, and you may end up spending more time and money on re-sits!

Combined Holiday and Training

There are a few holiday companies that provide RYA standard training courses at destinations in the Mediterranean. This can combine a nice holiday in warm sunny climes and get trained to Skipper a yacht at the same time. What could be better? The only drawback is that the Day Skipper qualification you would get in the Mediterranean would be marked as ‘non-tidal’, which means you wouldn’t be qualified to sail in tidal waters around the UK, for instance, or in the Caribbean. But, you can do extra training and convert to “tidal”, or if all you can imagine is Mediterranean sailing holidays, this is for you!

Where Can You Train

There are many training centres around the UK, too many to cover in this article.

The best way to find a training centre near you is to go to the RYA site and put in your postcode: https://www.rya.org.uk/training/courses/day-skipper-practical-sailing-course-dss

I trained in the Solent, so I am probably biased, but I would say this is probably the best place in the country to train because you can encounter pretty much every type of tide condition and every type of vessel, which is very helpful when you are being supervised. There are also countless harbours, estuaries and bays to visit, so you never get bored.

I would recommend that if you start learning in an area that you stick to that area when you do you further qualifications to Coastal Skipper. The reason is when you are sailing, you get to recognise the landmarks, so it is easier to work out your position. Also, if you are being assessed for your boat handling when you are mooring up in a harbour, it is useful to already be familiar with the features of the harbour.

Conclusion

As my instructor said to me when I passed the Day Skipper qualification, “Well done, now the real learning begins!”. He was right. I have been sailing for nearly ten years, I am still learning and I still make mistakes! People with a lot more experience than I have told me the same thing!

A word of caution: If you are going to hire a yacht as a newly qualified skipper, pick a calm day. The wind and tide around the UK can be pretty unforgiving some days and can be a handful for the most experienced skippers!

…or better still, book a summer holiday in the Mediterranean where there is virtually no tide and do your first skippering there!

For more information about RYA courses, check the RYA website at: https://www.rya.org.uk

For more information about chartering yachts once you’ve qualified, check out my article on yacht charter in the UK: https://blog.sailfinder.org/how-to-bareboat-charter-a-yacht-in-the-uk/

To find yachts to charter in the UK, checkout the search website: https://sailfinder.org it has a searchable list of every charter yacht in the UK.

Good luck and happy sailing!

Ian McLauchlan is a keen amateur sailor and Coastal Skipper, founder of sailfinder.org a charter yacht search site for finding charter yachts, motor boats and RIBs.