Royal Yachting Association
The RYA Yachtmaster Ocean is experienced and competent to skipper a yacht on passages of any length in all parts of the world.
Introduction
The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) Yachtmaster Ocean is the last tier of the Yachtmaster program. In the sailing industry, it is one of the most saught after certificate of competence.
An RYA Yachtmaster Ocean certificate holder has demonstrated a range of skills related to sailing offshore. In order to obtain the certificate, a candidate must satisfy the pre-requisites, complete a theory course, execute an offshore passage of at least 600 nautical miles – 200 of which must be offshore -, perform a written exam and a final oral examination. If one seeks commercial endorsement, the final exam must be envigilated.
The two most important pre-requisites are to have an RYA Yachtmaster Offshore and sufficient seatime to qualify. If commercially endorsed, the change of certificate from « Offshore » to « Ocean » means in effect that the certificate holder will no longer have a 150 nautical mile restriction for commercial operations.
The theory course relates to offshore marine weather, passage planning and astronavigation. It will most likely be taken online, and your evaluator will look at the results as you go throughout. How well you perform will be the basis of the evaluator recommandation prior to performing the final exam.
The marine weather aspect is about understanding the tradewinds, the seasons for tropical revolving storms around the world, and understanding meteorological systems suchs as fronts, depressions and hurricanes. Passage planning is formalizing the practice of planning a route. The astronavigation part is about taking sextant sights of the sun, of planets, of the moon or of stars and to be able to deduce the boat’s position. Astronavigation requires patience and an attention to calculation errors. Small errors quickly translate in position errors of several nautical miles.
The execution of a passage plan of more than 600 nautical miles is pretty open ended. It can be made anywhere on any boat aligned with the certificate sought after (sail or power), provided that it respects the RYA conditions. The evaluator will most likely not be on the passage, but will require the logbook, the passage plan as well as the sight reductions performed while on the boat. Indeed, a requirement of the passage is to monitor the boat’s position through sight reductions, at least one of which must be a running fix deduced from the sun.
The written examination lasts two hours and will include questions on sight reductions, weather and general ideas on passage planning.
The course is condensed and loaded with several exercises. As it is the case with other « YachtMaster » courses, it is intended to polish skills rather than acquire knowledge from scratch. The course is not particularly expensive – far less than the YachtMaster Offshore – and is also far less supervised.
The lack of supervision means there is more room to adapt the course to your taste and needs, but also that there is more room for major errors. One can be easily lost if the material is not familiar enough. As such, it may be best to at least understand the principle of sight reductions prior to starting the course. The key feedbacks will be given after the theory course, once the passage is executed… and during the oral examination.
Getting Through
The Course
I began the theory course in december of 2023. I took the class online with Navathome. In between work, cruises and other aspects of my life, it took me two months to complete the theory course. 70% of the course is on astronavigation. The principles are exposed, but the main focus is on the recipe for sight reductions.
The method used is the Marcq St-Hilaire intercept method. To a large extent, the class format works: in the end, I was able to perform sight reductions on star without having being exposed to the specifics, because the procedure is so repetitive that you end up understanding the steps for any sight reduction. I however felt compelled, from time to time, to google for explanations as to why the procedure works. This last part may not be a rabbit hole for everyone, as it delves both in the mathematics of celestial bodies, the history of astronavigation and other similar (but fun!) topics.
Depending on how you understand the solar system, polar coordinates and mathematical calculations, the astronavigation can either be easy, or very hard. I suspect that for most, its the hardest part of the course. For me, the two most demanding aspects were avoiding dumb arithmetic errors and not forgetting the convention for the wind direction. As the evaluator only saw the results of my calculations (sometimes including these mistakes), these small errors came back to haunt me during the oral.
The Passage and Passage Plan
As for the passage plan, I delivered a boat from the Bahamas to Canada in may 2024. That was a trip of 1450 nautical miles, including 200 nautical miles offshore of Florida, on the eastern side of the Gulfstream (image left).
I discussed the passage plan in detail in past blog posts here, here and here. My passage plan was intentionnaly overdetailed, as I intended to share it for pedagogical purpose. These additional details helped me during the oral examination. The evaluator already had several answers to his question list just by reading the plan. For the purpose of the oral, I also had to to provide the ship’s log, the sight reductions, and the chartplotter’s history of the voyage.
This trip was not uneventful. We faced an engine exhaust failure near Cape Hatteras, which explains the sharp turn (under sail) to Norfolk. We were able to perform a makeshift repair of the exhaust at sea, but we still needed to stop to replace the waterlock. Common sense also dictates that, even if the boat performs with the repair, the next failure may prove fatal.
The Written and Oral Examinations
I wrote the exam in december 2024. It contained no surprise. I will only state that if you did the theory course properly, you should not be surprised by the material. Perhaps one question required more than a procedural understanding of Astronavigation. Other than that, it covered the themes of marine weather, sight reductions and passage planning. For me, the challenge was to brush up and revise the material one year after taking the class while being busy with other notions.
Once I finished the examination, the evaluator checked my exam immediately. There is no point in conducting the oral if the written examination is a fail. I did well in the exam, and so was allowed to do the oral exam.
The instructor guidelines for conducting the oral examination are of public knowledge. Typical of RYA examinations, the instructor spent some time questionning the weakest points of my material. The RYA mentality is to assess how serious are the underlying problems of the candidate’s weakest points. If you understand the logic, it helps to provide answers. It also makes this part of the examination more pallatable.
The other big portion of the examination was about how I would perform in hypothethical scenarios related to an offshore passage (« What would you do if the boat dismasted ?», etc.). Here, the instructor mostly seeks to evaluate if you already thought about these questions. If you already thought about those things, as I did, then this part is much easier and almost becomes a conversation.
Conclusion
When commercially endorsed, the RYA Yachtmaster Ocean provides the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) « Master of Yacht 200 gt » certificate of competence. It lifts the distance restriction on commercial activities, but the restrictions of captaining sailboats less than 24 meters and less than 200 gross tons remain. It is the English equivalent of the French « Capitaine 200 ». The certificate also opens the door, through additional exams, to the MCA Officer of the watch certificate.
Generally, I found the Yachtmaster Ocean to be more open than the Offshore course. It also took much more time. If condensed in complete days, the Ocean course maybe took me 30 days, but in terms of overall time lapse, it took me a full year to complete. This time frame may not be availlable to everyone.
In the sailing community, wheter getting a certificate of competence or not is a good idea is always a subject of debate. Some argue that there is no better recognition than the mileage under the belt. Other swear by the training they received and use it as a distinctive coat of arm. Finally, others argue it is of limited commercial use.
I am not a big fan of the « coat of arm » aspect, but I certainly find the training I received useful. I also do not like to acquire competences without milking all of its worth. In that respect, having competences certified professionnaly is an additional asset over the sole possession of knowledge. It can be a huge stepstone for a carrer… or a retirement plan.
