RYA Day Skipper Practical
A course for aspiring skippers with some yachting experience and basic navigation and sailing skills.
Learn to skipper a short passage with the instructor on hand to give advice and encouragement and ensure your safety. Experience being in charge, taking credit when it all goes well and being responsible when it doesn't.
Before this course, if you are not sure that your sailing is up to speed, a good way to learn is on a solent skills development weekend with LCSC. This will teach you to sail and handle a yacht. If it's help with navigation that you need, you should take our Day Skipper shorebased course (see Navigation and seamanship theory on the left).
The Day Skipper course will be endorsed as tidal.
See the RYA site here for more information.
Additional Info
Course Title: RYA Day Skipper Practical
Course Duration: 5 days. We run our offshore practical courses out of Hamble Point down in the Solent. You will stay on the boat for the duration of the course.
Cost £ 755.00 for 5x consecutive days (Monday 9am meet up and return the Friday afternoon)
Course Headline: A course for aspiring skippers with some yachting experience and basic navigation and sailing skills.
Course Description: "Learn to skipper a short passage with the instructor on hand to give advice and encouragement and ensure your safety. Experience being in charge, taking credit when it all goes well and being responsible when it doesn't. Preparation for sea, deck work, navigation, pilotage, meteorology, rules of the road, maintenance and repair work, engines, victualling, emergency situations, yacht handling under power, yacht handling under sail, passage making, night cruising"
Ratio: 5:1 (students:instructor)
What's Included: RYA Competent Day Skipper Practical Course Notes, RYA YM Scheme Syllabus and Logbook, RYA accredited instructor, accommodation on board, gas, diesel, breakfast and lunch each day, 4 evening meals.
Mooring fees, which are split between the students, are not included.
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE: Recommended prerequisites for the Day Skipper practical course are that you are up to the Day skipper theory course standard & you are competent around a yacht.
If you do not hold an RYA Day Skipper Theory certificate, please contact our admin office with a brief summary of your sailing experience before booking onto the course.
If needed, a short discussion with the Chief Instructor will help us confirm that this course is appropriate for your level of experience. We will also ensure that you have a working knowledge of the IALA buoyage system and the Collision Regulations (COLREGs), as well as sufficient familiarity with nautical charts and almanacs to plot and take visual fixes, determine estimated positions and courses to steer, and calculate tidal heights.
The minimum practical pre-course requirement is that candidates have completed: 5 days, 100 miles, 4 night hours on board a sailing yacht
Next Steps: RYA Coastal Skipper Yachtmaster Theory.
Skills and Development weekends and Mile Builders are another consideration to build on practical experience and mileage.
Please refer to our online calendar for dates.
Should a course be waitlisted, please email the office to be placed on a waitlist if no other dates suit.
All group bookings, please email the office to coordinate dates.
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Last updated 08:43 on 5 June 2026