Rodney Steel and Sons, RYA Day Skipper on Bilbo Bagins
Posted at 11:08am on 28th July, 2010 • No comments yet
When Rodney Steel signed on for his fractional membership on Bilbo Bagins, our Beneteau Oceanis 37, he didn’t have the required RYA Day Skipper ticket that is required to take the boat out. Despite the fact that Rodney has owned a yacht in the past and indeed been a dinghy Cadet world champion in 1957 with his brother.
The 5 days of the course were split up into 3 days with Alasdair Marshall and 2 days with Rob Shapland-Hill (on the left in the photo). Rodney took the opportunity to get his 2 sons to come on board and also work towards their tickets.
Rodney says
“All three of us thought Alasdair did a great job with the first three days of our Day Skipper Course.
He know his stuff, is very enthusiastic and has exactly the right balance between keeping you at it/testing you, but at the same time making it fun. The boys absolutely loved it and were very pleased with their progress particularly in the fairly boisterous wind conditions.
The other thing I liked about Alasdair’s style is that he encouraged to make the decisions ourselves rather than just giving us answers to our questions i.e. forcing us to get used to making Skippers’ decisions. But always there to help out in the event that we cocked up, of course. It worked really well. He’s a great asset to SNC.”
Thank you guys, congratulations all three of you on your tickets and see you out on the water.