The Tiller School of Navigation and Seamanship - Page 1 of 2 |
Our world
The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) runs the UK's sail and power training schemes for yachtsmen and women. Their schemes are world leaders, entirely voluntary and produce excellent results. Tiller's students are, in the main, well educated, highly motivated and reasonably affluent and this dictates the style of our business.
Anyone can buy a boat and, at least in the UK, go to sea without any training. For many, if not most, people who go afloat for pleasure this freedom is taken seriously. That is probably why the RYA's scheme is so successful.
It is a combination of theory (shore based courses) and practical training. The practical certificates are the ultimate goal and the theory is an essential part of the process. At Tiller we concentrate on teaching the theory by self study and have just been re-accredited by the ODLQC. Our sister school (Corsair Sailing) focuses on practical courses and also teaches theory in the classroom. Both schools are recognised by the RYA and members of the National Federation of Sea Schools.
Our combination of self study and / or classroom teaching for the theory, together with practical sail training 'on the water' is proving successful. Students like the idea of coming afloat with us and many have said that they feel reassured because the theory is rooted in solid practical teaching experience. In return, and probably more important to Tiller, we get to meet our customers and can talk to them in depth about their experience with our self study courses. You cannot live on a boat with a self study student for five days without getting lots of feedback! It's been the source of many good ideas and innovations and is a primary contribution to our 'quality control' process.
Looking back
Tiller was founded in 1989 and was one of the first schools to provide self study courses for all three levels of the RYA's shore based syllabus. Day Skipper is the entry-level course covering boating and basic coastal navigation. Coastal Skipper / Yachtmaster Offshore is the advanced course on coastal navigation and Yachtmaster Ocean extends it to cover astro navigation and worldwide passage planning and meteorology.
When Andy Thomson, the current principal, bought the business in 1996 it was quite small with only around thirty students enrolling per annum. Courses were a combination of photocopied fact sheets and audiotapes.
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