Below is a transcript of an article written by Tristan Gooley and published by the Royal Institute of Navigation in Navigation News August 2003. To obtain a copy of the original article contact the RIN at www.rin.org.uk

Two Worlds

A trainee's comparison of the pilot's Instrument Rating and the sailor's Yachtmaster qualifications.

The pilot's Instrument Rating (IR) and the sailor's RYA Yachtmaster (YM) qualifications appear to have little in common, but there are some important similarities. The two qualifications are important to the pilot or skipper who wishes to operate safely when the visual clues disappear from their horizon, but the key similarity is subtler. The IR and YM are internationally recognized competence standards and as such they are relevant to the amateur and professional alike. They represent the height of ambition of most amateurs and the entry ticket for most professionals and this is what sets these qualifications aside from other important qualifications in either field. Without an IR a professional pilot has very limited options and no chance of an Airline Transport Pilot's Licence and a professional sailor will be expected to have the YM ticket.
It seems reasonable therefore to hope to gain some insight into the similarities and differences between the training worlds of the pilot and sailor by comparing the build up to the tests that must be passed to gain the two qualifications. It must be expected that the physical preparations are very different and there is probably little to be gained from examining these closely; more interesting observations may be made by comparing the training philosophies and methods used in each case.

The first thing that will strike the student navigator making enquiries as both an ambitious sailor and pilot in the UK is that one world is exclusive and the other is inclusive. This is not meant as a reference to the costs of training, which although comparable favour the wallet of the sailor initially, it is a reflection of the governing bodies in each case.
The Civil Aviation Authority is a regulator. It exists to make sure that everyone involved in UK aviation complies with its regulations and maintains high safety standards as a result. The CAA does not aim to encourage aviation, only to ensure that it is conducted within its regulatory framework in the interests of safety. It is clear therefore that it is not in the interests of the CAA to make it too easy to become a pilot. In terms of safety, which is of paramount importance to the lives and or livelihoods of everyone in aviation, this is a good thing but it does mean that at times during training it can feel like more of an administrative challenge than a navigational one.
The Royal Yachting Association has positioned itself as representative body for the UK's sailors and has inherited an unregulated world. It has been forced to take a more inclusive approach, since for as long as people had been putting to sea in small boats they had been a law unto themselves. This is a strange concept in today's paper-filled world, but the simple truth is that nautical navigation is an older pastime than legislation or bureaucracy. This has been changing slowly for years but, probably to its credit, the RYA has taken a stance of educate rather than legislate and as a result the entry procedure is simpler and more open.
The next difference to confront the budding navigator is the importance placed upon theoretical knowledge by each discipline in the early stages. The world of the pilot should not be entered by those who do not derive some pleasure or at the very least satisfaction from studying for and passing technical exams. The first hurdle for a pilot (after going solo), the Private Pilots Licence requires the student to pass 7 genuine exams. The closest comparison in the sailing world is probably the RYA Dayskipper course and although a five day shorebased course is normally taken to reach this standard, the two exams that accompany it are, if truth be told, hard to fail.
This difference is almost certainly more a reflection of the traditions mentioned earlier than the desires of the RYA. There are no laws stopping a small-craft owner putting out to sea with no qualifications, therefore if the basic qualifications are off-putting the RYA could argue they would be failing in their ambition to educate since no-one would enrol.
The emphasis placed on theoretical learning in aviation training may however betray a more fundamental difference in approach. Ironically airborne training in aviation is prohibitively expensive and the industry is constantly striving to find ways of meeting the necessary standards by minimizing the amount of time spent with engines turning. The opposite is true in sailing, practical time is comparatively cheap and hands-on learning is the norm. Including the theoretical exams it can take six months to complete the IR course, it would not be unusual for less than one day (15 hours) to have been spent in the air. A sailor can expect to spend in excess of one hundred times this on board a yacht prior to the YM exam. There can be no more succinct way of highlighting this point than by drawing attention to the fact that aviation training time is measured in hours and sail training time in days.
A direct comparison of time spent in 'real' training is not perfectly fair of course, because things happen much more quickly in the air. It is possible to spend twelve hours on a ninety-mile passage at sea without learning a huge amount. It is hard to spend twelve minutes at the controls of a Seneca without feeling like you have expanded your understanding in some way. However the truth remains that it would appear the world of sailing has a huge advantage over that of aviation in terms of bringing a student to a competent standard. Interestingly it does not seem to be as simple as that.
Aviation has taken what should have been a disadvantage and turned it around. The instructor and the student pilot cannot afford the time in the air for there to be any ambiguities or misunderstandings. This is true from both a financial and a safety sense: there can be few instructors comfortable in the right hand seat with a student who starts reaching for the wrong side of things when an engine failure drill is being practiced in a multi-engine aircraft. The concepts and drills have to be fully understood before the engines start. These two constraints have probably been the guiding principles in the evolution of an incredibly effective method of teaching; the brief, demonstrate, exercise, debrief model. Or 'I'm telling you what you are going to do, I'm telling you what you are doing, I'm telling you what you have done.'
Of course the better sailing instructors try to use a similar method, but they are hampered by what should be a natural advantage. Again because sail time is much more affordable, a system has evolved whereby nearly all teaching is done on the move. This seems to be the case from the very basics of understanding a tack or a gybe, up to the more complex maneuvers such as a Man OverBoard under sail. It is not uncommon to witness an exercise for the first time through the spray of the foredeck, whilst fighting to bring a headsail down. This is in part because boats are operated by crews and the costs are kept down by students taking turns as skipper and then as crew, but this does not explain why the briefing and debriefing, when they do occur, happen as part of the exercise. Even some of the better YM instructors seem to become restless and start talking about tides if you ask for a briefing for an upcoming exercise while the boat is still moored alongside. The inevitable result is that the trainee skipper's understanding suffers.
An advantage of the sailing hands-on approach that the IR course cannot get around is one of experience. The successful Yachtmaster will have made many genuine passages (the minimum is 5 greater than 60 miles) in the course of their build up; a trip from the Solent to Cherbourg being typical and even routine. It is unusual for a pilot's departure and arrival airport to differ during the IR training. The result of this difference is that the newly qualified IR pilot may feel technically competent, but there is a lot of experience lacking if the pilot wants to do more than beacon hop.

The student nearing the end of both the IR and YM courses will also begin to appreciate a difference in terms of a homogenised approach - or lack of it. You are likely to learn as many methods for doing an exercise under sail as you have instructors. The same is unlikely to be true as a student pilot. This is usually cited as an advantage by sailing instructors, the reason given being that all boats and all conditions are different, therefore the more methods you witness as you learn the better equipped you are to pick a suitable one as skipper when you confront a situation in the future. The truth may be more about characters than methods. Flying instructors seem to be rule-based creatures, they thrive on the belief that there is a right way of doing things and all other methods are probably wrong and therefore dangerous. Sailing instructors appear to be cast from a more romantic mould than this; the idea that there can only be one way of doing something would unlikely sit well with their reasons for wanting to be at sea.
The final hurdles, the IR flight test and the YM exam, are very different. The IR test is concentrated into a short space of time, about two hours, and as a result is very high pressure. The YM exam takes the form of a continual assessment over a longer period - anything up to two days. They do however have something in common: they are both quite tiring!
Incidentally there is some anecdotal evidence that the YM examination is less objective than its IR counterpart. The CAA employs the IR examiners directly, but the system is different in the RYA. Informal discussions with a number of freelance Yachtmaster examiners have revealed that, much to their irritation, their relationship and therefore future employment prospects with sailing schools are affected by their pass/failure rates on exams. If true this would point to a possible flaw in the system.
In summary the two qualifications seem to equip the aspiring navigator very favourably when compared to the basic qualifications in each field, but they also have a comparative weakness.
The newly qualified IR pilot is technically competent and precise, but is probably lacking in experience. This is a problem that could only be overcome in training by making the course even more expensive - not really a welcome option.
The Yachtmaster will have more real world experience, but may be lacking the technical precision, particularly in safety-related manoeuvres, that would come from a more homogenised training approach that placed as much emphasis on understanding as practice. The price for adopting such an approach would be financially easy for the sailing world to bear, but may still be too high for the romantics.

For other navigation related articles by Tristan Gooley see:

The Toubkal Odyssey

An account of his expedition from the South of England to the Summit of North Africa.

Making Sense of it All

Reawakening the senses in the cockpit.

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