You need to be a RYA Powerboat Instructor and possess your Advanced Powerboat Certificate to attend the course.

Realistically to succeed in the course you must possess a considerable amount of powerboating experience including being very competent and at ease at night. You will be an accomplished boat handler (in all conditions) and are likely to possess a level of background knowledge well beyond the syllabus.  Whilst not a prerequisite you should possess the RYA Coastal Skipper/Yachtmaster theory qualification or an equivalent level of knowledge.

NB: Effective 2011 to attend this course you must have passed the Advanced Powerboat Certificate of Competence examination (The 'Advanced Commercial Exam'). If you achieved your commercial endorsement by holding a pre 2005 Advanced Certificate please contact us.

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Background

There is no stipulated entry requirement for this course beyond the need for your Powerboat Instructor’s qualification and your Advanced Certificate, so what follows is only a guide. Key points to consider when you are considering an Advanced Instructors endorsement are:

• More often than not a PBI will be far more experienced than the vast majority of level 2 students. As an Advanced Instructor you will tend to encounter infinitely more experienced boaters – is there clear water between you & them? This covers both the general boat handling and particularly areas such as night navigation (you should be very experienced, competent and comfortable in this area), general navigation (can you lucidly teach CTS, DR, BTW, EPs and so on?) and a host of other areas. In short there cannot be an area on the course that you are not well placed to teach both in respect of your theoretical knowledge and your practical capability.
• Advanced Instructors should possess considerable sea time across a range of boats, their background knowledge is likely to extend well beyond the remit of the course.
   

The course itself

The assumption when you arrive with us is that as a PBI you can instruct (this has proven occasionally to be a dangerous assumption!) therefore the course is not attempting to develop particularly your instructional techniques. The course aims to ensure that you are competent to teach each of the areas on the syllabus and clearly therefore is an assessment both of your capability and knowledge, coupled to the way in which you teach these subjects. The Powerboat Trainer running the course will be working with you to ensure that you develop sessions that will get all of the points across in a structured and well thought through way. Clearly the issues of safety and course planning feature heavily.

The course lasts two days (plus some night work on the first day) and is not moderated by an additional Trainer. Depending on numbers we will work with 2 or 3 boats and might invite “guinea pig” advanced course powerboaters in for some of the sections.

Course outcomes

Clearly our aim is to help you through the course and for you to become an Advanced Powerboat Instructor. An action plan may be created for course participants that highlights areas that may need work on ahead of signing off as an APBI. We will always ask that the first Advanced Course you run once you become an Instructor will be alongside an experienced Advanced Instructor. If we can facilitate this through PTUK we will do else we will try to introduce you to other schools we know.