Online Training Courses
RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship
The RYA Online Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course is an inspiring online course for anyone interested in sailing, motor boating, sea angling or diving – or pretty much anything else on the water!
This course will give you the essential knowledge needed when you’re afloat, from navigation to safety and seamanship to passage planning. It is ideal for users of small boats such as RIBs and day boats such as those used by anglers. It’s also a great course for those who are currently crewing on yachts and want to learn a little more before eventually progressing to the full Day Skipper courses.
Course Fee: $355
RYA Day Skipper Online Theory
Pacific Sailing School now provides an online RYA Day Skipper Theory in partnership with Above and Beyond Boating. This gives you the flexibility to complete the course without committing several days to a classroom! Click here for more information.
Course fee: $695
Online Skipper Course
This learn to skipper course features online lessons, put together with multiple video tutorials and questions, to guide you through the journey to becoming a fantastic skipper. If you want to learn more about safe navigation and practices, regardless of your previous boating experience, this online course is for you. It doesn’t matter whether you live in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, the Gold Coast or anywhere else in Australia, and even overseas – anyone can enrol in this course.
What’s brilliant about this course, is that you can now let your interests direct your own learning. The modular approach to online learning means you can start learning to sail your boat by taking bite-sized lessons when you have time to focus on a particular skill. You won’t have to worry about missing a face to face class as you can work through this skipper course whenever your schedule allows.
The Online Skipper Course provides mentoring along the journey of your boat ownership whether you have Blue Water Skippering experience, or you are just embarking on your first coastal sailing passages. If you’re buying a boat, then this course will help you become familiar with handling your boat and performing basic maintenance. Overall, the course will teach you new techniques and skills irrespective of your experience. Participants have the ability to ask questions throughout the course, and the implementation questions at the end of each module ensures learning is immediately put into practice.
Trip Preparation
- Communications & calling for help
- Skippering in harbours & busy waterways
- Collision avoidance
- Manage your boat & crew on coastal passages
- Use your Dinghy
Weather & Passage Planning
- Understand weather forecasts
- Manage tides and currents
- Use routing tools and live observations
- Planning short & long passages
- Creating contingency plans
Learn Your Own Boat
- Manage your own vessel servicing and maintenance
- Look after your systems: engines, water, bilges, steering, electrical, and deck hardware
- How to keep an inventory of spares and tools
- Prepare racing audits and safety equipment
- Cleaning your boat
Boat Handling
- Manoeuvring your boat, and turning in confined areas
- Anchoring & picking up a mooring buoy
- Spotting & retrieving a person overboard
- Techniques for docking & berthing in different scenarios
- Twin-engined vessel handling
Sailing Skills
- Sailing upwind, downwind, and on other points of sail
- Types of sails
- Sail controls
- Trimming & handling sails
- Putting in, and shaking out, reefs in a sail
The course takes around 7 hours in total. It is structured so you can review the material as fast or slow as you feel comfortable.
Course access is available for 12-months following enrolment. If life gets too busy, then you can pause your course and then continue when you have time.
Course fee: $220
Complete Skipper Course
The Complete Skipper course is a comprehensive online learning experience that will advance your pathway to becoming a confident and proficient skipper. Whether you want to be a Local Adventurer, East Coast Explorer, or Blue Water Skipper, the Complete Skipper course will give you the skills and knowledge to take your boat on passages in a safe and enjoyable way.
The Complete Skipper is a bundle of our leading online training courses to complement the time you spend on your boat. The flexible online format allows you to choose when you want to study the course content and how long you spend completing lessons and activities. You can work through the content in a few days, or spread out over a few weeks if life is keeping you busy!
The Complete Skipper Course is a package of the Online VHF Radio Course, Online Skipper Course, and the RYA Day Skipper Shorebased Online Course.
Supporting materials
RYA Day Skipper Shorebased course notes, 2 Training charts and the RYA training almanac. Within the course, you can download the Complete Skipper Training book, ABB Passage Planner & Vessel Logbook. Navigators tools: course plotter, dividers, 2B pencil, eraser
The course takes around 50 hours to complete
Investment for 1 person: $985 (saving $140)
Investment for 2 people: $1645 (saving $605)