Yachting and Boating World forums: Scotland and back

We did it. Both passed our day skipper!

Just for interest, or not as the case may be.

When we got to Oban we were surprised to find that we were the only ones on the boat doing the day skipper. The others were doing competent crew, so the 'tutor' explained that Louise and I would act as skipper for the whole week.

The boat was a 38ft Westerly, this is her at Ardfern:

First day, I was asked to plan a passage for 28 miles from Oban South to Crinan, through some serious waters if I got the tides wrong. Luckily I didn't. although with a big boat and a crew and myself knowing next to nothing it was very stressful. I had no idea which island was which, either, so spent an awful lot of time at the chart table and compass. Louise did the second passage to ardfern Marina where we spent the afternoon mooring in all sorts of berths.

That was the one nice day. From then on the weather steadily got worse. Day 2 sailing a square course in a force 5. The tutor then asked me to plan a 20 mile night passage from Easdale North into an unlit bay at 3am. It was blowing a force 6 and raining heavily, so I plotted the whole course into the GPS and, with the exception of a rock that nobody saw on the way into a competely black bay (which we just missed), we did it.

We then sailed North West into the Sound of mull, Louise really stressed, and I pretty upset that the 'tutor' said nothing unless we asked him how to do something, and then more often that not just answered with a question. The other girl, doing her competent crew ended up in tears at one point when he shouted at her for getting a sheet the wrong way aropund the winch. At this point, a force 9 was forecast and the Tobermory lifeboat was towing yachts off the rocks all day. The boat was well heeled over and we regularly beat 8 knots.

I was then asked to pick up a mooring in an extremely crowded Tobermory harbour by sail alone. I was tacking back and fore on 30m legs at one stage, £100K yachts all around, and very very stressed, but I did it.

The following day we sailed back South in a force 8, the bows regularly underwater in the big SW swells, into a tiny mooring called Puilldobraihn, or somesuch.

My thoughts? It was much, much harder than I thought, and every time I seemed to do something right, there was no 'well done' the tasks just got harder. There didn't seem to be any consistency - Louise was not asked to do things nearly as difficult as I, and the three people on the competent crew also felt that he made it much harder for one than the others.

Anyway, despite this, I'm extremely happy that we passed, and gained a lot of confidence in being out in such bad conditions. I'm a little surprised at the course content, the fact that there was no syllabus, and we were not told what was going to happen, nor how we were to be assessed. I certainly did not enjoy it.