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RYA Seamanship Skills (Advanced Module)
What to do when the boat, the weather or the crew stops cooperating.
Seamanship Skills is one of the RYA advanced dinghy modules, taken after Basic Skills. It assumes you can sail and asks what happens when things go wrong.
Typical content:
It is the most useful module for anyone whose sailing happens away from a club with a safety boat on the water — which in Australia describes a great deal of dinghy sailing.
- Who it suits
- Dinghy sailors who sail without a rescue boat nearby.
- What it is not
- Not a rescue-boat or safety-boat qualification — that is the Powerboat scheme.
Other RYA courses
RYA Sailing Pathway
The whole RYA cruising route in order, and where you are allowed to skip a step.
RYA Cruising Level 1: Start Sailing
A short introduction aboard a small cruising yacht — the shortest way to find out whether yachting suits you.
RYA Cruising Level 2: Basic Skills
The follow-on from Level 1, adding real boat handling on a small cruising yacht.
RYA Start Yachting
Two days aboard a cruising yacht, for complete beginners who want a genuine taste of yachting.
RYA Day Skipper Theory
The classroom half of Day Skipper: charts, tides, buoyage, collision regulations and passage planning.
RYA Day Skipper Practical Sailing
Five days in which you stop being crew and start being the person responsible for the boat.
RYA Coastal Skipper Practical
Skippering beyond familiar water and beyond daylight — longer passages, night pilotage, heavier weather.
RYA Coastal Skipper and Yachtmaster Offshore Theory
The advanced shorebased course: tidal work, passage planning, meteorology and collision regulations at Yachtmaster depth.
Which course should you actually book?
Three questions — your experience, the boat you want to sail, and your goal — give you a starting course and the schools that teach it near you.