How to learn the collision regulations for the Yachtmaster exam

Ask a Yachtmaster examiner what fails candidates and the answer is nearly always the same: the collision regulations. Not boat handling, not navigation, not nerves, but a candidate who cannot say what a vessel showing three all-round lights in a vertical line, red-white-red, is doing, or who hesitates when a ferry appears on the starboard bow. The regulations are the one part of the exam that cannot be reasoned out on the day. They must be known. Here is how to know them.

Understand the structure first

The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs, or IRPCS in RYA usage) are 41 rules in five parts plus annexes. You do not need to memorise every word of the steering rules, but you must know how the parts fit together, because that is how the examiner's questions are organised.

• Part A: General (Rules 1 to 3). Application, responsibility, definitions. Rule 2 (nothing exonerates you from the consequences of neglecting good seamanship) and Rule 3 (the definitions of "underway", "restricted in ability to manoeuvre", "constrained by draught" and so on) matter.
• Part B: Steering and sailing rules (Rules 4 to 19). Section I, all visibility: lookout (5), safe speed (6), risk of collision (7), action to avoid collision (8), narrow channels (9), traffic separation schemes (10). Section II, in sight of one another: sailing vessels (12), overtaking (13), head-on (14), crossing (15), give-way vessel (16), stand-on vessel (17), responsibilities between vessels (18). Section III, restricted visibility (19).
• Part C: Lights and shapes (Rules 20 to 31). The definitions of each light (21), visibility ranges (22), then a rule per vessel type: power-driven underway (23), towing and pushing (24), sailing vessels and vessels under oars (25), fishing (26), not under command and restricted in ability to manoeuvre (27), constrained by draught (28), pilot vessels (29), anchored and aground (30), seaplanes (31).
• Part D: Sound and light signals (Rules 32 to 37). Equipment, manoeuvring and warning signals (34), signals in restricted visibility (35), attention (36), distress (37).
• Annexes: positioning of lights, fishing signals, sound signal appliances, and Annex IV, the distress signals.

What examiners test hardest

1. Lights and shapes for every vessel type, from any aspect. They will describe a set of lights and ask what the vessel is, which way it is going, and what you must do.
2. Sound signals in restricted visibility for each vessel type, and the manoeuvring signals.
3. Rule 18, the pecking order: sailing vessels give way to fishing vessels, not-under-command vessels and those restricted in ability to manoeuvre; power gives way to sail; everyone keeps clear of a vessel constrained by draught in a channel.
4. Rule 12 between sailing vessels: port tack gives way, windward gives way, and what to do if you cannot tell which tack the other boat is on.
5. Rules 9 and 10: what a yacht may and may not do in a narrow channel and a traffic separation scheme (do not impede vessels that can only navigate in the channel; cross a scheme at right angles).
6. Rule 19: the fact that in fog there is no stand-on vessel, and the specific prohibitions on altering course to port for a vessel forward of the beam.
7. Rule 17: when the stand-on vessel may, and then must, act.

Memory techniques that work

• Build the lights from a base. Every vessel starts with the basic set (sidelights, sternlight, masthead light for power). Then add the special all-round lights: red over white for fishing, green over white for trawling, red-white-red for restricted in ability to manoeuvre, red over red for not under command, three reds for constrained by draught, white over red for pilot. Learn the additions, not fifty separate pictures.
• Use rhymes sparingly but use them. "Red over white, fishing at night. Green over white, trawling tonight. Red over red, the captain is dead" (not under command). "White over red, pilot ahead."
• Flash cards, physical or app. Ten minutes a day, shuffled, until you get through the deck without error three days running.
• Test on real vessels. Every ferry, tug, dredger and trawler you see is a question. Say the lights out loud.
• Draw the situations. For the steering rules, sketch the two vessels and mark the give-way vessel and its action. Twenty sketches cover every case the examiner can pose.
• Learn the sound signals as a set. One prolonged (power underway, making way), two prolonged (power underway, stopped), one prolonged two short (everyone else: sailing, fishing, NUC, RAM, towing), one prolonged three short (last vessel of a tow), rapid bell (anchored), bell and gong (anchored over 100 m), and the manoeuvring signals (one short starboard, two short port, three short astern, five short "I do not understand your intentions").

A six-week plan

On the day

Answer in the form the examiner wants: identify the vessel, say what she is doing and which way she is heading, then say what you would do and why. "Trawler, underway and trawling, crossing from starboard to port; I am the give-way vessel under Rule 18 and I will alter substantially to starboard early and pass astern of her." That sentence, delivered without a pause, is worth more than any boat-handling flourish.