Tips from the water

Log the passage the day it ends, with conditions. A year later you will not remember the wind, and the examiner will ask.

Check both the shortest navigable planned route and actual distance run. Extra tacking does not turn a shorter route into a qualifying passage.

Keep a running totals sheet at the back of the logbook with the thresholds for each level printed at the top.

Get the signature at the dock, before the owner walks up the pontoon.

Volunteer to skipper the delivery home after every race. It is the easiest skipper day on the coast.

Brief the crew as if the examiner were a new crew member. They are listening to how you brief, not just what you say.

Prepare pilotage plans for every harbour you could be sent into, by day and by night, before the exam starts.

Talk. The examiner can only assess what they can see and hear. A silent skipper is an unknown skipper.

If something goes wrong, say so, fix it, and move on. Honesty under pressure is skippering.

Reef early, slow down in the marina, give every hazard a wide berth. Conservative is the exam standard.

Neutral before contact. A turning propeller near a person in the water is the one mistake nobody forgets.

Sleep between the two days. A tired candidate makes the mistakes a rested one would not.

Learn the collision regulations by repetition, a rule a day. There is no way to bluff a light you do not recognise.

Say the tidal calculation out loud: depth now, rise to come, roller height, scope factor. The examiner wants to hear the method.

Read the synoptic chart every morning and predict the wind before you look at the forecast. In a month you will understand fronts.

Back to the wind in the Southern Hemisphere: the low is on your right.

Chart datum is Lowest Astronomical Tide. Charted depth is the least water you will find, not the average.

Revisit Yachtmaster theory in the month before the exam. Secondary ports fade faster than you think.

Count the flashes before you commit to a light. "A green one" is not an identification.

Use the depth sounder as a navigation instrument. "We should cross the 10 m contour about now" impresses every examiner.

Choose the anchorage for 3 pm, not 10 am. Every Australian coast has a sea breeze that turns morning shelter into an afternoon lee shore.

One person points at the casualty and does nothing else. Losing sight of a person in a swell is how rescues fail.

Red light below, no white torches in the cockpit. Night vision takes twenty minutes to recover.

Write the abort plan before you leave. The decision to turn back is easier when it was made in harbour.

Cross a bar on the flood, in the least swell you can find, after a bar report from the local rescue base. Never on an ebb against a sea.

Northbound on the New South Wales coast, hug the beaches to dodge the East Australian Current. Southbound, stand out and ride it.

A roll cloud on the southern horizon on a hot Sydney afternoon is a southerly buster. Reef now.

Transit Port Phillip Heads at slack water and treat the published predictions as law.

In the tropics, nobody clears a fouled anchor by diving. Buoy the chain and slip it.

Log on and off with the local volunteer rescue base for every passage. Examiners like to hear it, and it saves lives.

All Australian coastal water is tidal. The "half in tidal waters" rule is one you meet without trying.

Get the LROCP, not the SROCP, if there is any chance you will work commercially. It saves a second exam.

HLTAID011 Provide First Aid satisfies both the RYA and AMSA. Get that one.

The commercial endorsement is a bridge, not a licence. In Australia the AMSA Sailing Master certificate is the licence.

Coxswain Grade 1 satisfies the Sailing Master engine requirement and lets you drive tenders. Many professionals hold both.

Start the AMSA task book early if you intend to work commercially. Recreational miles do not automatically become AMSA sea service.