RYA Start Yachting is an introductory course for beginners with the aim of giving experience of helming a yacht, sail setting, rope work & safety onboard, as well as giving the experience of life at sea, and living onboard a boat for the weekend.

This course can be completed by chartering our yacht Phoebe on a Skippered Charter basis, from Friday evening at 17:30, to Sunday afternoon at 15:00. More information about chartering Phoebe can be found on this page.

Please contact the office to make enquiries and book this course. 

Price: Skippered Charter – prices on our charter page
Maximum numbers: 4x candidates on board, not including skipper
Previous Experience: None
Assumed Knowledge: None
Duration: 2 Days
Location: Turnchapel Wharf, Plymouth, Devon, UK

Course Content:

  • The Yacht
  • Ropework
  • Rules of the Road
  • Man Overboard Recovery
  • Clothing and Equipment
  • Emergency Equipment & Precautions
  • Meteorology

Skippered Charters do not include food on board, mooring fees, or fuel.

Optional Extra:

  • G158 RYA Logbook £7.50

Weather on Courses: When training on our vessels, we are always subject to environmental conditions. Some courses can be more affected than others. We are based in Plymouth, therefore we are subject to the vagaries of British weather. On any given week or weekend, we can have no wind, too much wind, fog, too much sun, snow – sometimes they all happen on the same day….

On sailing courses wind is the key issue. Therefore there is a rare chance that you may not sail every day. If we can sail safely, we will. In high winds, luckily, Plymouth is a very sheltered harbour from most wind directions, therefore we can often get to shelter and then sail in those areas within our very large harbour and rivers. Please also bear in mind that if we cannot sail, we will cover theory subjects as all RYA practical courses still have approximately 30% theory in the course which we normally break up into chunks throughout the week/weekend, but we may save them for the windy/no wind/foggy times.

In extremes: There are also those weekends or weeks when the weather is simply diabolical and we get a week of Force 9-10’s when we may just call and stop the course, usually beforehand if it is well forecast. More often than not we get a day or so of poor weather and work around it.

All courses: On all courses our aim is to complete the course in the safest way possible, covering all the theory and practical elements. We are not able to guarantee courses will have practical sessions on every day as we will work around the weather forecast