Powerboat Level 2 - tips for teaching coastal theory

If we asked 50 Powerboat Instructors how long they spend covering the theory section of the Powerboat Level 2 (PBL2) syllabus and to what level of detail, you would almost certainly get 50 different answers. One thing you can be sure of, is that we spend too much time in the classroom, but would like longer, and we never feel we have covered this section of the course in enough detail.

Our students however, have been on the receiving end of what an entire RYA Day Skipper Shorebased Course crammed into 3 hours on a Sunday morning feels like - we are all guilty of wanting to teach them that little bit more.

We need to remember that PBL2 is intended to be an entry level, boat handling course. A student can only absorb so much information during the first two days of their boating career. Remember it’s taken you many years to learn everything you know about boating.

Ideally 80% of the course is practical - giving you a maximum of 2½ hours to cover the theory from sections B and C of the syllabus, spread over 2 days.

The syllabus is quite specific in terms of course content, but it only really gives us the headlines of what to cover.

What is important is that we keep it simple, to the correct level and most importantly, relevant to skippering our small powerboat out of a marina, to an anchorage, a mile or two along the coast and back again. We aren’t teaching them to cross oceans here.

Look at the syllabus in more detail and choose tides for example - section C says they need to ‘understand tides and tidal streams’. When I teach an RYA Day Skipper Shorebased Course, I spend 6-8 hours covering tides and tidal streams and still believe my students don’t fully understand tides to the level I’d like them to. Now I have 15 minutes to cover it in a classroom on PBL2.

Introduce the day’s tides, weather, a chart of the local area at the beginning of a course - as you lead them through the decisions you’ve made to decide its ok to go boating this weekend - and what you need to wear. This should take 10 minutes maximum. Follow up in the classroom with more detail later.

Pictures of moons and suns on a whiteboard to explain springs and neaps are nice, but we don’t have time for that. What they really need to go away from the course knowing, is whether it will be deep enough to launch on the slip way, get over the harbour entrance sand bar and recover the boat this afternoon.

From my weather forecast, I need to know if the tidal stream is going with the wind or towards it, as that’s the difference between my family enjoying a day out on the water, or hating every minute of it.

Keep it simple and relevant and get them used to finding this information. Show them modern ways to get the information from tidal apps or websites that give instant tidal heights for any time, rather than confusing them with tidal curves or rules of 12’s. They will go away from the course with endless new apps and websites on their phones as we use them for every other part of our life.

The same applies to charts, passage planning and the rest of the syllabus. Keep it simple and relevant to going powerboating and get them involved. The RYA Start Powerboating book gives you an idea of the level of detail to go into, and gives some good diagrams to use as teaching resources.

The only ‘can do’ part of section C requires them to steer using a hand bearing or steering compass. This can be achieved between two navigation marks at sea, or race marks on an inland lake. It doesn’t require a 5 mile passage to sea. Time is better spent on slow speed boat handling - which keeps your fuel costs down as well! Remember, you can only travel 3 nautical miles (navigable, not as the crow flies) from your launch/departure point anyway without express permission from RYA Training, see TN29-19.

The RYA Essential Navigation & Seamanship, Day Skipper Shorebased and Intermediate Powerboat courses are great follow-ons, however, people won’t sign up to these if we’ve taught 30% of the syllabus as a bonus part of a PBL2 course.

Keep everything simple, relevant and spend your time on the boat rather than in the classroom.

For those delivering the course coastally, spend some time reflecting on what you cover and how you achieve this. For those at inland locations who are now required to cover section C, have you put much thought into how you will cover this yet, before delivering your new syllabus?

More information and guidance can be found on the CPD Hub on the RYA Training Support site.

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Originally published in RYA Wavelength July 2019