not Yachtmasters :(

Helen: Well...we didn't pass our sailing exam. Thanks for all your good luck messages all the same. We went for RYA Yachtmaster which is the highest non-commercial qualification you can get, as well as the lowest commercially endorsable qualification, and the exam was bloody hard! The examiner had us picking up buoys under sail, anchoring under sail and doing blind navigation round imaginary reefs. In the end he said he thought we sailed well together, and that his kids would be safe with us, but that we didn't have the experience for YM, so he gave us Coastal Skipper instead, which is the level below. To be honest, I'm dead chuffed with that. I wasn't really sure that I was up to YM, and Coastal is good enough for me. I've had a lot of sailing experience in the last year, but not much boat handling or skippering, so I think it was a fair decision for me.

C on the other hand is fuming. He didn't like the examiner from the start and thinks he has been treated very unfairly. Our instructor agrees, and they're in the process of lodging an official complaint to the RYA. C is cross about all sorts of things, the edited highlights of which are:

- when the examiner came on board he said he'd be examining us, but also that he hoped we'd learn something too - which put us in a very difficult position - all the time we weren't sure if he was testing us or teaching us, especially when he told us to do manoeuvres differently from how we'd been taught
- he didn't seem to be able to treat me and C differently - it was as if we were a job lot and I feel that C might have been tarred with my brush as it were. For example, the examiner said that it took C 5 attempts to pick up a buoy under sail which just isn't true - that was me!!
- he put us under stress by his personality, rather than just stress from the situation, which isn't allowed in RYA guidelines
- he wouldn't allow us to do manoeuvres the way we'd been taught by an RYA instructor - he wanted them done his way instead, which is just daft. If he's an RYA examiner he ought to abide by RYA regs.

And so on. You get the idea. Anyway, we're now back in Ch-Ch totally knackered (I'm writing this from bed, and it's 1135 in the morning - don't plan on doing much today at all - might finish reading Dan Brown to C (I keep him amused while he's driving by reading drivel that doesn't require much brain power) but that's pretty much it - oh, and we might go and meet some people we met in Tahiti for a beer). Then we have to sell the car, and head to Oz - but C might want to retake his YM exam in Nelson first...

Will keep you posted
Hxx