RYA Day Skipper Shorebased Course

Weekend or weekday 5 day RYA training courses, based in Southampton, Hamble and Lancashire

A comprehensive introduction to cruising for inexperienced skippers. This course equips you with enough knowledge to navigate around familiar waters by day. A basic knowledge of lights is also included to introduce you to night cruising.

The course is is the main building block for many other RYA practical sailing, motor cruising and powerboating courses and is interesting and fun.

Many practical navigation and seamanship exercises are included with much of the learning coming from classroom discussion about real world scenarios.
The syllabus includes the basics of seamanship, the essentials of coastal navigation and pilotage, chartwork, electronic charts, position fixing, plotting a course to steer, weather forecasting and meteorology, tides, collision regulations,  construction, parts and equipment of a cruising boat and emergency and safety procedures including distress calls,use of flares, safety harnesses, lifejackets and liferafts.

The Details

Please see our schedule for course dates and current prices (from £325).

The instructor for your course will be a fully qualified RYA Shorebased or Yachtmaster Instructor.

The course pack includes a chart, plotter, course handbook, exercises and an electronic chart plotter CD.

There are two exams at the end of the course to test learning and understanding.

Number of students varies depending on location. Please see Locations and Formats for more information.

If you prefer the course to be run for just you and maybe your partner or a group of friends at a location of your choosing, this is also possible - call us for our private instruction rates.

What To Do Next....

call us or choose a convenient date from our schedule of course dates and prices. Other dates may occasionally be available - please ask.

If you are a group of four or more people, please call us to discuss your preferred dates. We can run a bespoke course for your group.

Simply call us on +44(0)7977 459671 or +44(0)1253 853075 to confirm availability and to discuss your requirements in more detail, then complete and return one booking form per person with a 30% deposit payment.

Once the full course fee has been received we will send a formal booking confirmation and Joining Instructions to you.

Other useful pre course information is provided in our Shorebased Courses - Preliminaries sheet

Useful Pre Course Reading

The following books are recommended and available by mail order.

RYA Day Skipper Shorebased Course Notes
RYA Navigation Handbook plus Exercises
International Rules for The Prevention of Collisions At Sea (Col Regs)

It is handy to build up a small library of useful books and manuals covering seamanship, navigation and other specialist subjects such as weather. Please see our recommended list of reading and equipment.