Time	2 Days
Prerequisites	None required
Exam	None/continuous assessment with your instructor
Aim	To gain the basic skills required to take a small boat to see or to take an active part in the running of a yacht

What Is the RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course

As the title suggests, RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship, this course is a theoretical land-based course aimed at complete beginners.

It touches on the basic knowledge and skills required to be useful in helping take a small boat to sea.

What Does the RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course Allow You To Do?

The RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course sets you up to be ready for progressing with the RYA Competent Crew course, a practical, on-the-water residential course.

Who Can Do an RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

The RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course course is open to anyone. There is no age limit and no previous experience required, either theoretical or practical.

If you have some practical experience, then you may want to consider the RYA Day Skipper Theory course which is also suitable for novices.

Can You Go Straight to the RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

No practical experience is required. Anyone, can indeed, go straight into an RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course.

Where Can I Do My RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

There are many thoughts on where is best, but to be truthful, it is what works for you best. 

Your 2 main options are in a classroom course or via an online provider. The 2 different types of learning suit different types of people.

Classroom courses benefit from listening to and talking to other students as well as having the instructor in front of you. Online courses benefit from being able to work at your own speed, repeat lessons and get a more in-depth learning experience as you are not tied to completing the course at the end of the week.

At Ardent Training we pride ourselves on bringing the best of both of these worlds together with built-in discussions on our online platform, a student forum and every single lesson being recorded in video format as well as visual and text.

How Long Does an RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course Take?

The RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course is suggested to take a minimum of 15 hours of learning.

How this time is shaped can vary. In online courses, you can generally work at your own speed, while in classroom environments it is generally offered over a weekend or 2-day period, but could be done during an evening class of a few hours a week.

Is There a Set RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course Syllabus?

There is indeed a syllabus. Each of the following topics represents a specific part of the learnings that will be covered on an RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course course in varying levels of detail.

Charts, publications, buoyage, navigation, safety, anchoring, tides, electronic navigation, rules of the road, weather forecasts, pilotage and passage planning detail the various aspects of the syllabus.

Read on to learn in a little more detail about how each of these is covered in a little more detail.

What Will I Learn in an RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

The RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course covers a wide range of topics but tends to just give a slight introduction to the topics mentioned above are these topics not covered in the same amount of detail as the higher-level courses available.

During the course, you will learn the basic terms associated with charts and publications, popular daytime buoyage marks, how to plot a simple fix and understand its heading or bearing.

Personal safety will be covered while also touching on initial boat-related safety such as engine checks.

Basic use of GNSS, weather forecasts and tides will also be covered along with the early understandings you should be aware of for preventing collisions at sea.

Why you need a passage plan, how to follow it and why pilotage needs included will also briefly be touched on.

All of these topics are covered just enough to get you to a level that when certain aspects are mentioned or talked about on board then you have an awareness of what is happening.

What Is the Cost of an RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

As ever, many schools differ in price and it is important to understand everything that is included within your course such as materials, available content and instructor help. As always, the cheapest is not often better.

What Is the Pass Mark for the RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

There is no specific pass mark as such. The instructor aims to bring you up to a level where you have a satisfactory level of theory knowledge across the subjects covered to be able to put your new learnings into practice during your future time as a crew or helping hand on board a vessel.

What Comes After RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course?

After your RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship Course course, you will want to get out on the water and complete your RYA Competent Crew course, putting some of your learnings from the RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship course into practice.

You can also start to look at progressing your theoretical knowledge towards the RYA Day Skipper Theory.