Day Skipper Study Time
It is now less than a week until I rejoin Bryan on Aroha. What seemed like a long five weeks now seems to have flown by. Unfortunately, most of it spent chasing banks, ex-employers, car salesmen, and satellite TV companies. A few weeks back in Dubai and I had renamed bureaucracy as ‘idiocrasy’ as so much of what happens here lacks any logic or reason. Trying to get things in order to leave the country for a few months has been an uphill battle and at times I have been very close to losing the plot entirely. On top all of the ‘challenges’, I have also been studying hard to complete my RYA Day Skipper theory exam. To gain the full qualification I need to complete the theory exam and then a five day/night practical assessment on board a training yacht.
It was over a year ago that I decided to gain the qualification and, having discovered that the only provider of the training in Dubai charges twice as much as any provider anywhere else in the world, I opted for a distance learning course for the theory and planned to do the practical sometime in the not too distant future. In fact, my Christmas present from Bryan was to take the practical course anywhere in the world. Thailand and the Australian Whitsunday islands were high on the list. Joint redundancy has kind of put the brakes on this sailing/training dream, but the theory qualification was still well within my grasp. And last September I did indeed start my theory course, with a year in which to complete it. It seemed like a long time, but what with work (when I had some) and then travelling to the Maldives and Sri Lanka etc, eight months later and I still had two modules and the exam to go. The reality was if I didn’t complete it before I left again, there was no way I would have completed it before the twelve months was up. So I was on a mission – five weeks to complete and pass the theory.
I managed to complete the modules a week or so back, and then came the exams. My satisfaction at being so close to the finish line was quickly dampened by the realisation that if I got an answer wrong on either of the two papers that related to the ‘safety’ module I would automatically fail the entire exam; nothing like a bit of pressure! A few late nights and additional grey hairs and I finally got confirmation that I had passed. I will keep the IOU Christmas present for the practical assessment in a safe place but, for now, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief that my studying is over and that next week I will be back on board and ready to RELAX!!!!!!
More from Aroha as we resume our travels to Chagos – Helen x
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