Where do you go after completing your RYA Day Skipper Theory and Practical courses! Ideally you will be using these new theory and practical skills to enjoy being out on the water while also gaining valuable experience navigating familiar waters. There will come a point when you want to extend your cruising grounds and head further afield. Passage and pilotage planning are essential once you aspire to leaving familiar waters. There are a number of basic principals to follow when planning a passage that, if applied correctly, will make your passage so much easier, much less stressful and ultimately safer.

This course is an ideal bridge between the RYA Day Skipper and RYA Yachtmaster theory courses. Whilst there is a theory element to the course the emphasis is on the practical application of the RYA Day Skipper theory. After planning your passage or pilotage exercise using paper charts, other publications and resources, you will then run your passage/pilotage plan using the simulator. This is a real time, fully immersive simulation where you could be skippering a vessel in potentially testing scenarios whilst in the comfort of our simulator suite.

These sessions are run with small class sizes so that everyone gets a fully immersive simulator experience, running your own planned pilotage or passage exercise skippering anything from a container ship to small, fast rescue craft. Throughout your pilotage or passage exercise your vessel will be navigating real ports and harbour entrances and will be subject to potential collision situations, taking appropriate action as required, helming the vessel in daytime, nightime or poor weather scenarios.

The aim being to build confidence in passage & pilotage planning using charts and electronic navigation techniques to execute passages and port entries by day and night.