UKSA's Facilities and Unique Environment
Behind the glamorous, efficient and relaxed atmosphere on any professional yacht, there's a team with focus, skills and knowledge on all aspects of seamanship, navigation and yacht maintenance.
Seamanship training afloat
UKSA’s fleet is carefully chosen to provide experience on a wide range of yacht types with different handling characteristics. This ensures that when you are out in the industry, you can step from one boat to another with confidence. The core of the fleet is based around our 36-45ft yachts, which are ideally suited to perfecting handling under power and sail. Onboard you can master the techniques required to conduct your command passages, taking part in self skippering exercises and passing your RYA/MCA Yachtmaster practical exam.
Our small fleet of matched keelboats provide an invaluable tool in developing your sailing skills and helping to make the transition to yacht command. These boats are ideal for quickly developing handling skills under sail, in particular man overboard, coming alongside and picking up moorings. As a matched fleet, we can also provide some racing to polish your boat handling skills still further.
The UKSA advantage
- A diverse range of yachts including two 67ft Challenge Yachts, Broadblue multi-
hull, top-quality Sweden Yachts and smaller keelboats - 104ft motor yacht, Fairline 38 and 6.8m RIBs
- Yacht technology department with over £750k of hardware
- Dedicated marine engineering training workshop
- Transas engine room simulator
- The latest high tech equipment including a £150k Transas navigation and radar simulation suite.
- Unrivalled on-site facilities
- The esprit de corps that develops when you eat, live and breathe boats 24 hours a day with like-minded individuals.
During your training, your instructors will unwrap the mystery surrounding essential plant and machinery – our yacht technology training equips you with all the functioning principles behind equipment onboard, with the maintenance sections of our yachting programmes focusing on the general ship’s knowledge that you will require to run a vessel effectively.
Our programmes provide you with the methodology, hands-on approach and the elementary understanding of all the major yacht systems. We are able to provide access to these items, enabling you to dismantle and re-assemble them, so you can confidently deal with similar situations when you encounter them afloat. We will also show you how to establish and manage an on-board ship’s maintenance routine.
Navigation
Our philosophy is the complete integration of all navigation techniques in a seamless and professional manner. A full understanding of both electronic navigation and traditional techniques are therefore crucially important. A mix of shore-based instruction, simulation and practical teaching afloat ensures continuity between classroom theory and real-world navigation practice.
Transas simulator
The Academy’s £150,000 Transas Suite provides a valuable learning environment in which to sharpen your navigational ability. You can practice your command skills, navigate in all weathers and learn to understand radar systems. The facility has five workstations (including radar, ship controls and electronic charts) and can simulate seven different ships, interacting with over 30 target vessels within six different cruising areas around the world to simulate a vast range of navigational situations. Once you have mastered the basics (including navigation, boat handling, search and rescue, and bridge management), we can introduce a range of onboard system failures for you to correct and compensate for. It is great to be able to put your navigation theory and command skills into practice in a controlled environment where all your decisions can be played back and analysed with positive learning outcomes.
Expert staff
As a maritime Academy, UKSA is able to attract and employ specialist instructors in all areas of training, ensuring the tuition you receive provides you with the greatest possible depth of understanding.
Challenge yachts
With their exceptional pedigree as 67ft Global Challenge yachts, UKSA Albatross and UKSA Whirlwind bring a great deal more than their size and 42 tonne displacement to the party. As well as providing the platform on which we teach many of the essential command skills, they are a working example of larger yacht systems, maintenance, management and on-board ship routines.
Helming boats of this size is an art in itself, so expert help and advice is always on hand. Loads on the sheets of yachts this size may exceed 6 tons, which places a great emphasis on doing things in the right order. Close quarter handling, watch-keeping systems, sail handling, loading winches, anchoring and man overboard recovery are all manoeuvres in which Albatross and Whirlwind clearly demonstrate the challenges of large yacht management.