The Complete Day Skipper

Produced in response to demand for a stable-mate for the best-selling Complete Yachtmaster, this broad-based skippering primer was published in 2002. Written in a literary style, rather than pictures assisted by a little text, it is a book to read as well as merely consult. 'CDS' deals with all aspects of running a small yacht. It is also probably the first comprehensive skipper's manual to tackle the subject of piloting a yacht by integrating GPS as a primary tool, without forgetting the classical principles which still form the basis of all navigation. I have developed this approach to teaching through my work with Yachtmaster instructors and with the full approval of the RYA. It is based on real-time experience, sailing my own family yacht through thousands of miles in today's world.

Like its predecessor, The Complete Day Skipper also covers all the boat handling, safety and other skills applied in the RYA Day Skipper syllabus. It is of similar size to The Complete Yachtmaster and is also from Adlard Coles Nautical.  

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Extract from the introduction to The Complete Day Skipper

‘A Day Skipper is one competent to take charge of a small yacht on short daytime passages under moderate weather conditions, in waters with which he or she is familiar'....

A less official way of quantifying the Day Skipper is that a person who has recently achieved this standard should be capable of chartering a modest yacht on a Monday and bringing her back to base safely and on time the following weekend. A skipper’s awareness of the limits of the qualification is therefore implicit. He’ll have learned already that there’s no such thing as bad luck at sea, and if it’s going to blow like the clappers on Friday, this should have been foreseen. Ideally, the yacht would then be back on the mooring by Thursday evening with the skipper thinking of something useful to keep the crew out of the pubs the next day. At worst, she will be upwind of her destination. That is good planning. So is having the common sense to recognise a difficult berth it’s better not to try for, and choosing an easy one instead. The successful day skipper soon learns that plunging in and hoping for the best is rarely as peaceful an option as hanging back and thinking things through. An old Yankee schooner skipper I sailed with told me that the floor of the ocean is paved with optimists. I’m not sure I’d go that far, because anyone who goes to sea for more than a few carefully controlled sunshine trips must have a streak of ‘hope-for-the-best’, but you’ll take the point...

Digital Exercises

You can't enjoy The Complete Day Skipper to the full without a copy of my Digital Exercises to go with it.

The Complete Day Skipper Digital Exercises were created for you to test yourself chapter by chapter as you work though the book. They come on a full-interactive CD-Rom starring Spike Marlin (animated and in full colour!), and if you have half as much fun solving his posers as I did putting them together, you'll get your money's worth twice over. Visit Spike's web page by clicking here to get the feel of things. Don't be put off by the smell of old seaweed and Stockholm tar. Spike's mustard keen when it comes to modern navigation. I even caught him sailing a Bermudan sloop the other day...

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