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All at Sea has teamed up with My Sailing Course to give away an Online Day Skipper Theory Course worth £295.
There is a moment in many sailors’ journeys when being useful crew is no longer quite enough. You want to choose the route, check the tide and understand what the forecast means for your passage. Shorebased theory gives you the knowledge to make those decisions with greater confidence before you take the helm.
My Sailing Course was built to make that learning engaging and practical. Drawing on more than a decade of classroom teaching, its online courses use fully animated, interactive lessons rather than asking students simply to read through a manual. Each session is designed to take around 10 to 20 minutes, making it easier to fit study around work, family and time afloat. You can move steadily through the course or return to a topic whenever you need another look. Lessons work across devices, so you can revise on the move and switch to a larger screen when chartwork calls for more space.
The RYA Day Skipper Theory course is for aspiring inshore skippers and anyone preparing for the Day Skipper practical course. Over approximately 40 hours, students cover chartwork, position fixing, tidal heights and streams, buoyage, pilotage, meteorology, collision regulations, safety and passage planning. These subjects come together in real decisions: whether there will be enough water to enter a harbour, how wind and tide affect the route and when a different plan would be wiser.
Online need not mean learning alone. Students can ask My Sailing Course’s instructors for help by phone, email, WhatsApp, text or video conversation. There is also a personal debrief at the end of the course to talk through progress and next steps. The included course pack supplies training charts, the RYA shorebased notes, an almanac, plotter and dividers, so students can practise navigation with the tools they would use at a chart table. Course content remains available after completion for revision before a practical course or a future trip.
The theory course ends with chartwork and general assessment papers. Successful students receive the RYA Day Skipper Theory certificate. It is a shorebased qualification, complementing rather than replacing the experience of handling a boat, but it can make practical training more valuable: you arrive ready to concentrate on putting your knowledge to work.
There are starting points for other stages of the journey too. The free Sailing Essentials course is designed for anyone who spends time on the water. RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship introduces charts, tides, pilotage and core seamanship to beginners, while the online SRC marine radio course prepares learners for the separate practical assessment with an RYA assessor. The aim throughout is to make sound seamanship easier to understand and easier to apply.
If you are considering Day Skipper Theory, you can try the online course before committing: the free trial requires no card details. The full course is currently listed at £295. Explore the lessons and course details at mysailingcourse.com/product/day-skipper-theory-course or speak to the team about the right starting point for you.
Terms and conditions: Closing date is 1/12/26. Post entries to 13a Thornwood, Colchester, Essex CO4 5LR, enter online at www.allatsea.co.uk or email editor@allatsea.co.uk with the subject header ‘Day Skipper Theory competition’. Winners will be notified by email. The winners will be the first correct entry drawn at random after the competition closing date. The draw is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Open to residents of the UK aged over 18. No cash or alternatives will be offered. If any prize is lost or damaged during the course of delivery, All at Sea will provide reasonable assistance in seeking to resolve the problem, but it will not always be possible to obtain replacements for lost or damaged goods, and in that event no financial compensation would be payable by All at Sea or their affiliates. We reserve the right to cancel the competition, if circumstances change that are beyond our control. Subject to availability, UK delivery only. By entering you agree to be bound by all the rules and agree that your name and county may be published in the paper if you win. Please indicate on your entry if you do not wish to receive information about other products and services from All at Sea and The Sailing Business Ltd, trading as My Sailing Course, by post or email.