Channel Sailing Club is a Recognised Training Centre of the RYA. All club courses lead to the issue of the appropriate RYA Certificate. We encourage our members to gain and upgrade their qualifications in navigation, seamanship and other sailing-related skills.  Our goal is to have club boats skippered and crewed by persons with the best possible experience and ability and to foster safety and ultimately the enjoyment of the sailing environment. 

Talk nights at the Club

In the winter months, we hold a series of educational talks on topics of interest to all of our members. These talks are presented on Tuesday club night starting at 8 pm and last for no more than an hour. For details see the Social page. These talks are in addition to those given by invited outside speakers who frequently entertain and educate us throughout the rest of the year.

Practical training

Inexperienced members are able to learn and practise sailing skills, to an extent depending upon circumstances, on boats owned by other club members. We also organise navigation rallies and skills weekends in which all members can take part.

Shorebased training

Channel Sailing Club organises several RYA shorebased courses, all run by RYA recognised instructors, for the benefit of its members. CSC is a non-profit making organisation, which means that these courses are run on a break-even basis. It also means that an advertised course may be cancelled if too few people apply - but this rarely happens. Non-members of CSC are welcome to join the Club if they wish to take part in any of these events and, of course, all other club activities, both on and off the water. The annual fee for joining the Club is £25 at present. Course application forms (with joining instructions and booking terms and conditions) can be downloaded from the link provided in each course description below.

RYA Diesel Engine: 
The Instructor for this course is club member John Lindsay. John’s course is replete with tips that may well enable you to get home under power when your engine falters or fails to start.

RYA VHF/SRC Radio:
Instructor John Lindsay also gives this one-day course. This course not only qualifies you to be the confident, certificated operator of a ship’s radio, but it also teaches about GMDSS, the Global Maritime Distress Safety System – essential knowledge for those sailing out of local waters. Get hands-on practice with a live VHF/DSC radio set.

RYA Radar:
We offer this one-day certificated course once a year. The Instructor is Nick Pannell of Pan Pan Sailing. It’s well worth it to be able to act as a second pair of ‘radar eyes’ for the skipper.

RYA CEVNI:
Club member Gerry Roper runs the popular CEVNI course around the first week of March. It’s required if you go inland on European waterways. The cost is unlikely to exceed £20 for this eight-hour course. Contact Gerry for further information.

RYA First Aid:
Nick Pannell of Pan Pan Sailing is the Instructor for the First Aid course. This course is a prerequisite for the RYA/MCA Yachtmaster Offshore practical examination and the certificate is valid for three years.

RYA Day Skipper Shorebased:
Bob Hammond is the Instructor for this course.
The syllabus includes chart work, position fixing, tides and tidal streams, buoyage, pilotage, navigation, passage planning, International Regulations for Preventing Collision at Sea, meteorology, GPS and chart plotters. This course prepares students for the RYA Day Skipper 5-day practical course. There are homework assignments and two written assessment papers. It is a course for beginners or those with little sailing experience.

Course Details for 2011 and early 2012:

To take part in any of these, please enrol as soon as you can....it really helps the course organiser.

Please note that places on all courses are initially provisional. A course will be confirmed when enough applications have been received to cover the fixed costs of running the course.

Contacts

Club members can contact the instructors through the usual channels.

Non-members please contact us by email, replacing the ‘#’ character with a ‘@’ character when entering the email addresses.

For all information regarding the RYA VHF/SRC and RYA Diesel Engine course contact John Lindsay directly at diesel#channelsailingclub.org

For all information regarding the RYA CEVNI course please contact Gerry Roper at
cevni#channelsailingclub.org

For all other courses and for general queries about training contact the Club’s Training Officer at training#channelsailingclub.org