Are we losing some of our most experienced sailing instructors due to the cost of compliance to a British training scheme?
The Royal Yachting Association , better known as RYA, is the United Kingdom’s national body for all forms of boating, including dinghy and yacht racing, motor and sail cruising. This association runs a training scheme that has become the dominating influence over Australia’s sailing training courses in recent years.
Yachting Australia, our own national association formed the ‘RYA/Yachting Australia National Yacht Training Scheme’ in 2008 when Yachting Australia and the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) formed a partnership for a new Yacht Training Scheme. The rationale behind this alliance was to provide an international recognition of qualifications as well as a national harmonisation of course content and delivery.
As reasonable as this sounds, the downside has been that in our Australian instructor’s are forced to pay out of their own pocket sums of up to $1480 in order to be an accredited Yachtmaster Instructor under this RYA training scheme. Many of our certified instructor’s are asking the question “why isn’t there some recognition of prior certifications ?”
Is this new British scheme the way forward? Should our instructor’s be forced to pay these fees? Let us know what you think….