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Is RYA Day Skipper a boat licence?
No. It is a training certificate, not a licence issued by any government.
No. RYA Day Skipper is a certificate awarded by a training scheme, not a licence issued by a government or regulator. Nobody can revoke it, and holding it does not by itself grant you permission to do anything.
This confuses people because in Australia recreational boat licences genuinely exist — they are issued state by state, with different rules in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and so on, and they usually apply to powered vessels above a certain speed or size. A Day Skipper certificate is not one of those and does not substitute for one.
What Day Skipper does do is demonstrate to a charter company, an insurer or a crew that you have been assessed as capable of skippering a small cruising yacht in familiar waters by day. That is genuinely valuable — it is simply not a legal permission.
If you intend to work commercially, neither Day Skipper nor Yachtmaster is an Australian commercial qualification. AMSA administers those separately.
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