The original story of three men in a boat is a humorous tale of three friends, plus dog Montmorency, on a boating holiday from Kingston to Oxford and back.  The parallel with this little account is limited to the fact that there were three principal male participants – it was neither humorous, nor a holiday.  However, the outcome was successful.  We all ended up with a Yachtmaster Offshore Certificate of Competence and a big grin apiece.  So, in that respect, I suppose you could argue there was some humour…

Through various conversations earlier in the year, it became clear that we three, Simon Dipple, Martin Hemming and the author, Peter Smerdon, all aspired to possess our Yachtmaster Offshore qualification.  Eventually, a date was agreed with Keith Harding, Principal of sailing school Reach 4 the Wind and thus we assembled at Ocean Village on a Sunday evening in October.  Keith was to be our instructor and Steph Williams had kindly agreed to be our ‘supercrew’.  That evening, Keith ran us through the plan for the next three days of training and the format of the exam on Thursday and Friday morning, when we would be joined by the independent Yachtmaster Examiner.

Over the previous weeks, we had been revising the contents of the syllabus, assisted by various suggestions from Keith.  For at least one of us (one guess only allowed), it had been over twenty years since Yachtmaster theory, so a lot of revision was needed.  Flash cards had been well thumbed.  Stress levels on the boat amongst the candidates were high, and sleep was elusive and troubled.

The next three days were tough, practicing boat parking, points of sail, man overboard under power and sail, picking up mooring buoys, pilotage, navigation (visual and blind) and when it got too dark to see, dealing with the theoretical aspects of the syllabus.  The weather was reasonably kind to us, mostly dry with ideal wind speeds.  Monday night found us off Cowes using the mooring buoys to practice our approaches again and again, until we were too tired to make much of a success of it any more.  We spent the night in the Yacht Haven, intending to start again on the same buoys the following morning.  Alas, the berthing master had other ideas and we reappeared bright and early on Tuesday to see the last of these buoys being lifted for the winter.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday nights at Port Hamble, having used the river entrance to practice night pilotage.  The two sets of leading lights into the Hamble entrance aren’t the easiest to identify, but we’re all pretty good at them now.  Wednesday evening was spent preparing our cross-Channel passage plan until the early hours of exam day.  As things fell, the next day was the author’s birthday; certainly not quite how I might have planned a celebration, but sometimes, you have to make the best of things!

Keith sat us down on the morning of the exam and told us that the worst was behind us.  No longer would we have him chirruping on our shoulders.  He was sure we had the necessary skills, all we had to do now was demonstrate them to the examiner.  Not sure that any of us believed him, but as ever, Keith was right.  Don’t know why we should ever have doubted him.

The examiner arrived, we completed the paperwork, paid the fee and then we were off, each having to do a safety brief and talk through of engine checks.  First up of the practical exercises was boat parking, with yours truly leading the way.  The first two were fine, then the proverbial c***-up, despite two attempts.  Despair!

However, the examiner then asked Simon and Martin to take their turns, both successfully and then I had another try, this time also successfully.  As Keith had said, the examiner wasn’t looking for reasons to fail us.  Then, we took the boat out into Southampton Water for the ‘rosette’ (points of sail), man overboard, firstly under power and then sail.  All we had to remember was the process that Keith had taught us.  In the stress of the situation, that sometimes got a bit garbled, but we all recovered our ‘man’ safely – special thanks to Steph here for being such a dab hand with the boat hook.

We continued with blind navigation – a very sudden onset of a particularly dense fog.  Some would argue that the main fog was in the examinees’ brains, but this exercise was also completed as requested by the examiner.  The practical stuff was interspersed with one-to-one checks that we knew the theory and lights, sound and day signals tests, using both examples on the water and flash cards.  Eventually, after a very long day, we returned to the Hamble; as he left us, the examiner gave us some encouraging words so the examinees had a rather better sleep that night than they did the night before.

On Friday, the only practical test left was to pick up a mooring buoy under sail.  The first task was to find a suitable buoy, which required a trip to the top of Southampton water.  Once again, we were needed to get into the ‘process’ and following that helped each of us through the test.  Then it was a review of the passage plans as we returned to the Hamble and finally, the examiner spoke with us all in turn and congratulated us on passing the test.  At that point, all the hard work and stress became worthwhile, as you can see by the accompanying photograph.

All examinees would like to thank Keith for his patience and professional teaching approach, and Steph, for being such a great ‘supercrew’, all very significant factors in enabling us to achieve the certificate of competence of ‘Yachtmaster Offshore’.  As the phrase goes, “We couldn’t have done it without you!”