Coaching Yachtmaster Candidates - Preparation Weeks & Common Fails

Prerequisites

This lesson covers the work of a Yachtmaster Instructor: preparing competent sailors for the Coastal Skipper practical course and the Yachtmaster Coastal and Offshore exams. Before starting you should:

• Have read the lessons on the instructor ladder and on teaching afloat; the EDICT structure and the feedback principles are assumed here.
• Hold, or be working towards, the Cruising Instructor endorsement, with experience of teaching Competent Crew and Day Skipper.
• Know the Yachtmaster Coastal and Offshore exam syllabus in G158 and the exam prerequisites (mileage, days, passages, night hours, certificates) in detail.
• Be able to perform every exam task yourself to a high standard: man overboard under sail and power, blind navigation, pilotage by night, berthing in cross-tides, passage planning with tidal gates, and the collision regulations without hesitation.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• Explain the difference between teaching a skill and coaching a competent sailor towards a standard.
• Assess a candidate's readiness for a Yachtmaster exam against the syllabus and the prerequisites, and say so honestly.
• Run the core preparation exercises: man overboard under sail, blind navigation, night pilotage, berthing in tide, passage planning under questioning.
• Use a coaching conversation (GROW) to help a candidate fix their own weaknesses.
• Recognise the faults that most often fail Yachtmaster candidates and build them into the preparation week.
• Prepare candidates for the examiner's style: open questions, "what if" scenarios and a day of being watched.
• Run a Yachtmaster preparation week safely with candidates who are confident, sometimes over-confident, skippers.

Teaching Versus Coaching

A Competent Crew student does not know how to tack. A Yachtmaster candidate knows how to tack, and how to reef, anchor, plot a course to steer and berth. What they may not have is the judgement, consistency and command that the exam tests. The Yachtmaster Instructor's job is therefore less about showing and more about observing, questioning and holding the candidate to a standard.

Three shifts in approach follow:

1. From demonstration to observation. You will demonstrate rarely. Mostly you watch the candidate skipper, with the crew doing what they are told, and record what you see.
2. From telling to questioning. "Why did you choose that side of the channel?" teaches a Yachtmaster candidate more than "stay to starboard". The exam is largely questions; prepare them for it.
3. From one skill to the whole job. The examiner assesses skippering: the sum of planning, boat handling, crew management, decision making and knowledge. Preparation must do the same. Isolated skill drills have their place, but most of the week is run as a series of real passages with the candidate in charge.

Assessing Readiness Honestly

The first job in any preparation week is to find out whether the candidate is ready. The RYA sets the prerequisites for the exams:

Check the logbook on the first morning and check the mileage is real. Then sail. The matrix below is a way of recording what you see across the main exam areas and deciding where the week's effort goes.

Click to zoom

The honest conversation is sometimes the most important teaching of the week. A candidate with 2,600 miles, all of them as crew in the Solent, who has never berthed in a cross-tide or planned a passage with a tidal gate is not an Offshore candidate yet, and the kindest thing is to say so on Tuesday rather than let the examiner say it on Saturday. The RYA's own guidance is that most failures come from candidates who are not ready, not from candidates who have a bad day.

The Core Preparation Exercises

Man overboard under sail

Examiners ask for a man overboard recovery under sail and expect the boat back alongside the casualty, stopped, with the casualty on the windward side in a controlled way, usually within a few minutes and without a dangerous gybe. The plan view below shows the standard method and the coaching points at each stage.

Coaching points:

• The shout, the pointer, the danbuoy and horseshoe, the MOB button: all in the first ten seconds, and the candidate must direct them, not do them all.
• Immediate action: heave-to or bear away onto a beam reach to stop the boat getting far away. Many candidates sail half a mile before they do anything.
• The return: beam reach away, tack (not gybe), approach on a close reach so that the sails can be spilled, aim to stop with the casualty on the windward side at the shrouds.
• Stopping: the boat must actually stop. Practise judging the final approach in the day's wind and sea.
• Recovery: explain the method (halyard, tackle, sling, scramble net) and who does what. The examiner will ask.
• Under power: engine on, check for lines in the water, approach to windward of the casualty, stop, engine in neutral or off before anyone enters the water.

Run it unannounced, repeatedly, with different candidates on the helm, until the recovery is calm and quick in whatever conditions the week provides.

Blind navigation

The examiner will simulate fog or a navigation-equipment failure and ask the candidate to take the boat from one point to another using the chart, compass, log, echo sounder and a tidal stream estimate, with the candidate usually below at the chart table giving courses and times to the helm. The diagram shows the exercise and the plan a candidate should prepare.

Click to zoom

Coaching points:

• Prepare before the fog: a dead-reckoning plan with courses, distances and times, the tidal stream for the hour, a contour to follow, a danger to avoid and a clear way of knowing when to stop.
• Use the echo sounder as a position line. Following a contour is the most robust technique and candidates rarely use it.
• Work in time, not distance, when the log is unreliable; record every alteration.
• Keep the crew informed and keep a lookout and sound signals going on deck, because the exercise is also about managing the boat in fog, not just plotting.
• Stop if lost. A candidate who says "I am not sure of my position, I am going to stop and sound" has passed that exercise; one who presses on blindly has failed it.

Night pilotage

An Offshore exam includes a night passage or pilotage. Coaching concentrates on the pilotage plan (sketched, with light characteristics, bearings and the sequence of marks), the use of the ship's lights and a hand-bearing compass, identifying lights against shore clutter, and crew management in the dark: who is on deck, who is clipped on, how the skipper keeps a lookout while reading the plan with a red torch.

Berthing and boat handling in tide

Candidates who learned in marinas on slack water are undone by a two-knot cross-tide. Practise: approaching into the tide, using the tide to hold off or set on, springing off, turning in a confined space with prop walk, picking up a mooring under sail and power in tide, and anchoring with the correct scope and a transit to check for dragging. The examiner wants to see the candidate explain the plan before the manoeuvre and then do what they said.

Passage planning under questioning

The candidate plans a real passage for the following day and is questioned on it: tidal gates, ports of refuge, weather, the crew's capability, fuel, lights and the collision regulations likely to be met. Practise the questioning as the examiner would, in the "what if" form: "what if the engine fails here", "what if the wind backs to the south-west and increases at this point", "what if a crew member is injured on this leg".

The Coaching Conversation

With competent adults, the most effective tool is often a structured conversation that makes the candidate do the thinking. One widely used structure is GROW: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. The diagram shows the four steps with example questions.

Click to zoom

An example after a weak berthing:

• Goal. "What were you trying to achieve on that approach?" ("Come alongside port side to, bow into the tide, stopped at the cleat.")
• Reality. "What actually happened?" ("I came in too fast and the tide pushed the bow off before the line was on.")
• Options. "What could you do differently?" The candidate lists: slower approach, more angle into the tide, a spring on first, a crew briefed to get the midships line on before anything else.
• Will. "Which will you do on the next one?" A commitment, then the next attempt, then feedback against that commitment.

The point is not the acronym. It is that the candidate diagnoses and fixes the problem, which is exactly what the examiner wants to see them do unprompted.

Faults That Fail Candidates

Examiners and Trainers see the same faults year after year. Build them into the week:

• Not commanding the boat. The candidate does everything themselves rather than directing the crew, or gives vague instructions ("can someone get that line?"). Insist on named orders and a crew briefing before every manoeuvre.
• Collision regulations by rote. Candidates can recite Rule 12 and cannot say what the trawler on the port bow is doing. Teach lights and shapes by looking at real vessels and asking "what is it, what is it doing, what do you do?"
• Weak tidal height work. Secondary ports, intermediate heights and the height needed over a sill must be done quickly and correctly, by hand. Set a problem every morning.
• Pressing on. The candidate who continues an approach that is going wrong rather than aborting and going round. Praise the abort.
• Poor passage plans. No contingency port, no tidal gate calculation, no thought about the crew. Have them plan a passage every evening.
• Over-reliance on the plotter. Turn it off for at least one passage.
• Silence under questioning. Candidates who know the answer but freeze. Question them constantly and kindly during the week so that the examiner's questions are familiar.

Preparing for the Examiner's Day

Tell candidates what the day will look like: an examiner who is a stranger, eight to twelve hours (ten to eighteen with two candidates), a mixture of skippered passages, set-piece manoeuvres and questioning, and a debrief at the end. Points to make:

• The examiner is looking for a safe, competent skipper, not perfection. One poor berth followed by a good second attempt and an honest explanation is a pass; refusal to admit the first attempt was poor is not.
• Think aloud. The examiner cannot assess reasoning they cannot hear.
• Brief the crew (the examiner may well be one of them) before every manoeuvre.
• If asked "what would you do if", answer as skipper, with the action first and the reason second.
• Eat, drink and rest. A twelve-hour exam is also a test of stamina.

The candidate should also know what they are entitled to: a seaworthy boat they are familiar with, crew of a reasonable standard, and the examiner's independence (they will not be examined by their own instructor).

Running a Preparation Week Safely

Yachtmaster candidates are confident skippers, which brings its own risks. The YMI remains the skipper in law and in fact, however much the candidate is "in command" for the exercise. Set the ground rules on day one: you will intervene if safety requires it and say so at once; the candidate steps back; the debrief follows. Confident candidates sometimes argue; do not argue on the helm, argue alongside with the chart out.

Tired candidates make mistakes. A preparation week with two night passages and daily man overboard drills is fatiguing; plan rest as deliberately as exercises, and remember that the exam itself may follow immediately.

Worked Example: Tuesday of an Offshore Preparation Week

Two candidates, Mark and Elena, are preparing for an Offshore exam on Saturday. The YMI has assessed both on Monday: Mark's boat handling is strong but his chartwork is slow; Elena's planning is excellent but she does not command the crew.

• 0800. Tidal height problem for both at the chart table: height of tide at a secondary port at 1430, and the latest time to cross a 1.8 m sill with 0.5 m clearance. Mark takes twenty minutes and makes an interpolation error; Elena takes eight. The YMI works through Mark's error with him and sets another for the evening.
• 0900. Elena skippers the departure and a pilotage out. She is told that today she may not touch a line or the helm; she may only give orders. By the second manoeuvre her orders are named and specific.
• 1100. Unannounced man overboard under sail with Mark on the helm. Recovery in four minutes, slight gybe on the return. The GROW conversation afterwards: Mark identifies the gybe himself and chooses to tack next time.
• 1300. Blind navigation, Mark below, Elena on deck managing lookout and sound signals. Mark follows the 10 m contour to the harbour entrance buoy and arrives within 100 m of it. Praise is specific: the contour choice was the thing that made it work.
• 1600. Elena berths in a cross-tide, aborts the first approach when the bow pays off, goes round, and gets the midships line on first on the second attempt. The abort is praised in front of Mark.
• 1900. Both plan Wednesday's passage, including a tidal gate at a headland, and are questioned on it for half an hour in the "what if" style.

By the end of Tuesday the YMI knows that both can pass on Saturday if Mark keeps practising tidal heights and Elena keeps commanding.

Common Mistakes

• Teaching a Yachtmaster week like a Day Skipper week. Too much demonstration, too little observation and questioning.
• Avoiding the honest conversation. Letting an unready candidate go to the exam does them no favours and reflects on the centre.
• Drilling skills in isolation only. Man overboard drills matter, but most of the week should be real skippered passages.
• Letting the candidate do everything. Command is tested; insist they direct the crew.
• Never turning the plotter off.
• Forgetting that you are still the skipper. A confident candidate is not a licence to stop keeping a lookout.
• Fatigue. Night passages plus early starts plus an exam on Saturday is a recipe for a tired failure. Plan rest.

Summary

• Coaching Yachtmaster candidates means observing, questioning and holding to a standard rather than demonstrating.
• Check the exam prerequisites on day one and assess readiness honestly; say so early if the candidate is not ready.
• Core exercises: man overboard under sail and power, blind navigation (use the contour), night pilotage, berthing in tide, passage planning under "what if" questioning.
• Use a coaching conversation (GROW) so that candidates diagnose and fix their own faults, which is what the examiner wants to see.
• The recurrent fails are lack of command, rote collision regulations, weak tidal heights, pressing on, thin passage plans and plotter dependence.
• Prepare candidates for the examiner's day: think aloud, brief the crew, answer as skipper, admit and fix errors.
• The YMI is the skipper throughout; set intervention rules and plan rest.

Check Your Understanding

1. State the mileage, days and passage requirements for a Yachtmaster Offshore exam.

Answer: Within the last ten years: 50 days at sea, 5 days as skipper, 2,500 miles, and 5 passages over 60 miles including 2 overnight and 2 as skipper, at least half the sea time in tidal waters on vessels under 24 m. Plus an SRC (or higher) radio certificate and a valid first aid certificate, and minimum age 18.

1. What is the most robust technique in a blind navigation exercise and why do candidates rarely use it?

Answer: Following a depth contour with the echo sounder. It gives a continuous position line independent of the log and tidal estimate. Candidates are trained to think in bearings and plotted positions and forget the sounder.

1. During a man overboard under sail, the candidate gybes on the return and the boat arrives at the casualty at four knots. What are the two coaching points?

Answer: Return by tacking rather than gybing (a gybe in a hurry is dangerous and uncontrolled), and approach on a close reach so the sails can be spilled and the boat stopped with the casualty to windward at the shrouds.

1. A candidate's logbook shows 2,700 miles, all as crew on a friend's yacht in the Solent, and 3 days as skipper. Is she eligible for the Offshore exam?

Answer: No. She has 3 of the required 5 days as skipper and her 5 passages over 60 miles including 2 as skipper are unlikely to be met. The instructor should say so at the start of the week and plan accordingly.

1. What does GROW stand for, and what is its purpose in coaching?

Answer: Goal, Reality, Options, Will. It structures a conversation in which the candidate identifies what they were trying to do, what happened, what they could change and what they will do next, so that the diagnosis and the fix are their own.

1. Why should the instructor forbid a candidate from touching lines or the helm for a session?

Answer: To force them to command: to give named, specific orders and brief the crew, which is what the examiner assesses and what candidates who do everything themselves fail to show.

1. How long is a Yachtmaster Offshore exam for two candidates?

Answer: Ten to eighteen hours, with a maximum of two candidates per 24 hours.

1. A candidate aborts a berthing approach and goes round. How should the instructor respond?

Answer: Praise the decision explicitly. Recognising that an approach is failing and going round is exactly the judgement the examiner wants; pressing on is a common cause of failure.

1. Why run at least one passage with the chart plotter switched off?

Answer: Because examiners test navigation without electronics and over-reliance on the plotter is a common fault; the candidate must show they can navigate by chart, compass, log and sounder.

1. Who is the skipper when a candidate is "in command" during a preparation week?

Answer: The Yachtmaster Instructor, in law and in practice. The candidate exercises command for the exercise, but the instructor sets the intervention rules and retains responsibility for the vessel and crew.

Sources and Further Reading

• RYA Yachtmaster Offshore exam: prerequisites, duration, assessment areas.
• RYA Yachtmaster Coastal exam: prerequisites, duration, vessel requirements.
• RYA Cruising and Yachtmaster Instructor: what a YMI may teach.
• James Stevens, former RYA Training Manager, on the Yachtmaster exam: what examiners look for and why candidates fail.
• RYA Yachtmaster Scheme Syllabus and Logbook, G158: the exam syllabus.