Price
£770
Nights
Five
Age range
16-25
Start port
Portsmouth
End port
Portsmouth
Passport
Yes
DofE
Yes
RYA
Competent Crew
Voyage code
EV054
Bursary
Available
Voyage highlights
Join our exciting five-night Exploration Voyage along the stunning south coast aboard our 72ft Challenger yacht. This is the start of our three-voyage journey—Exploration, Empowerment, and Leadership—perfect for young adventurers with little or no sailing experience.
On your adventure, get ready to explore the ocean, make new friends, and boost your confidence and self-esteem as you sail with a crew of enthusiastic young people. You’ll learn new skills, sharpen your teamwork, improve your communication skills and create memories that last a lifetime.
Plus, on this voyage, you can complete the DofE Gold residential and earn your RYA Start Yachting certificate— the first step on your sailing qualifications journey!
Leaving Portsmouth, you’ll sail through the Solent and along the stunning south coast. Likely stopovers include Cowes or Yarmouth, Poole and Weymouth. Depending on the weather conditions, we may sail to Alderney, Sark or Guernsey in the Channel Islands.
Be sure to have your camera to camera your memories, as you may spot dolphins, seals and fin whales along the way.
Beyond just sailing, you’ll walk away with new skills, newfound confidence, and new friendships.
Throughout the week, you’ll experience steering a yacht, sail handling, ropework—all while learning essential safety practices onboard. If conditions allow, you’ll also get to do some night sailing too.
On board, the crew will be split into two watches— traditionally, known as Port and Starboard. In your watches, you’ll take turns to be involved in all aspects of sailing the Challenger from deck duties and maintenance to cooking and cleaning, fostering a sense of responsibility and teamwork.
At the end of the voyage, each crew member will receive a personal assessment covering their leadership, teamwork and communication skills— a great addition to your CV.
During this voyage, you will work towards achieving your RYA Competent Crew certificate.
The RYA Competent Crew syllabus includes:
- Sea terms and parts of a boat, rigging and sails
- Sail handling
- Ropework
- Fire precautions and fighting
- Personal safety equipment
- Man overboard
- Emergency equipment
- Manners and customs
- Rules of the ‘road’ (at sea)
- Dinghies
The cost of your RYA Competent Crew certificate is included in the price.
RYA logbooks are available for purchase onboard at a cost of £6 (Skippers are only able to take cash for this).
All our voyages of four nights or more qualify for the residential section of the DofE Gold Award.
Please let our Reservations Team know before sailing if you want to use the voyage for this.
You’ll be asked to enter your passport details as part of the booking process.
If you don’t have these to hand, please contact us as soon as possible after submitting your booking form to let us know your details, as we cannot accept your booking without this information.
You will also need to present your valid passport to the Skipper at the start of the voyage.
The Skipper will determine the final route depending on weather and other variables.
Your Skipper can also recommend you for our volunteer crew training programme, if they feel you have the skills and attributes that we’re looking for. You can speak to your TSYT crew if this is something you’d be interested in and you’d like to find out more.
All meals on board are included.