Mileage building trips to Alderney - General
This is a great opportunity to develop your motor cruising experience on passage between Poole and Alderney as part of a scheduled trip. Each passage will be over 60 miles and so be valid towards your Yachtmaster Offshore passages.
Course Duration
Usually one day but could increase to two days subject to weather. Please note this passage can only run in good weather and may be cancelled at short notice. Also this course does not include accommodation. If there is a delay and there is a need to stay over in Alderney this would be arrange but at your cost.
Course Dates
These trips are scheduled to tie into planned trips to/from Alderney.
Course location
Poole to Alderney and back.
Prior Experience Required
Candidates should be at the level of Dayskipper Practical or above to be able to benefit fully from the experience.
Minimum age
18
Instructor – Student Ratio
Our motor cruiser is run by Steve Porter who is a highly experienced commercially endorsed Yachtmaster Offshore. Steve is also a RYA Motor Cruising Instructor. Onboard will be one or two of you joining Steve as part of the crew. There will be other passengers on board.
Plan for the crossing
You can approach this crossing in one of two ways. The first option is simply to be a passenger and not take any active part in the running of the vessel on passage. Steve is happy for you to do this but it would miss the chance to take a more active role in the passage. The second and preferred option is that in advance of the crossing you create pilotage plans for the Poole departure and Alderney arrival and any other ports that you consider ports of refuge. Likewise you then plan the crossing factoring in the planned departure times as so create the course to steer for the passage, identify the waypoints, identify tidal gates, predict timings etc. In short you do all of the planning as if you were the Skipper. For the return leg you can do exactly the same.
Before you go we can then review all of your planning with you and pick up any points that merit amending/developing. On the morning of the passage you will input your route into the plotter and then with Steve’s approval run that route. During the passage you will continue this involvement to run the chartplotter/radar/comms/helm as decided on the day.
Steve will remain the Skipper and these passages would not count as your skippered passages. There will not be opportunities for close quarter handling.
Why choose Powerboat Training UK for a Dayskipper Practical course?
Our location and teaching facilities ~ Poole Harbour is a truly amazing teaching location – so much so that the RNLI and the Royal Marines base their training operations here. Our classrooms are well resourced, professional, clean and tidy.
Likewise our base in Lymington at Aquasafe Powerboat School is at Lymington Yacht Haven which like Cobbs Quay is a large marina with a huge range of craft. The Solent offers an outstanding cruising ground with a wide variety of harbours and marinas to enter.
Our Instructors ~ We ensure that our instructors are teaching 100% ‘Best Practice’ and have a process whereby we constantly review their sessions to ensure that you get the most productive experience from your time with us. All teach because they love boating and we work with them to constantly ‘upskill’ their qualifications and experience.
Our history ~ We started the school over ten years ago and have grown a reputation for delivering on our promises. Our clients range from individuals with their own craft to organisations such as Sunseeker, the RNLI and we were awarded the RYA Training contract by Dorset Police for the London 2012 Olympic events in Weymouth.
We are also very proud to have written the RYA Powerboat Handbook and the RYA Advanced Powerboat Handbook.
Our craft ~ Our main training vessel is ‘True Blue’ a Rodman 1250 with twin 430Hp Volvo Penta engines operating through twin shafts. True Blue is an established charter boat based at Poole Quay Boat Haven and it makes a great training vessel. It is fitted with a considerable amount of electronics and has AIS, dual VHFs, dual radars, an electronic GPS based compass (these are very unusual on smaller craft), navtex and is coded to Cat 2 (60 miles from a Safe Haven).
What is included in the course price? ~ When you undertake a course on this craft with us then the price you pay includes all fuel used and includes VAT too – a common extra.
Does the price represent good value? ~ remember in life you pretty much get what you pay for. We have great facilities in large marinas offering a great all-round experience. Check out the other relevant pages on this website to see what we mean.
Course prices The price quoted in the ‘Key Course Details’ section above is the price per head for 1 person, for 2 persons the per head cost reduces by 2.5% and for three people by 5%. The price shown is inclusive of VAT.
Some of the offers available when buying this course include…..
Special Offer No1!! Book and pay for your VHF Course at the same time as you book this course and only pay £75 for the VHF course (including course pack). (Usual cost is £100, you also need to pay the RYA Fee which is £60). You can choose whether to undertake the course in the classroom or online. We run VHF Courses every two weeks so fitting you in will never be an issue – we run these courses in Poole and Lymington.
Special Offer No2!! We also offer the opportunity to book the classroom RYA Dayskipper Theory Course for £350 (usually £395) when booked alongside a Dayskipper Practical course. This is a great course to really further develop your understanding of charts, tides, buoyage and navigation onto the next level after the course.
Mileage building trips to Alderney - Book Now
Thank you for your interest in this course.
Hopefully any dates that we have scheduled work well with your availability. If the dates don't quite work then we are always keen to be as flexible as possible to help accommodate your availability - just contact us and we’ll see what we can do.
We're always really keen to chat to you when you’re booking a course as whilst we are happy to take bookings through this system for your convenience - nothing beats chatting about boats and courses!
Don't forget too that if you are an individual or company/organisation booking a few people onto courses then we may be able to schedule dates around you. Equally, for bookings some time in the future we can usually juggle our course dates if what we have scheduled doesn’t quite work for you.
When you make a booking on this system please remember that is subject to confirmation and you will receive confirmation from us at the latest the next business day. You will not be charged until we send the confirmation.
