How to Find Crew Positions and Build RYA Sea Miles

You've done the theory. You can calculate a tidal height in your sleep. You know your cardinal marks from your lateral marks. Now you need the miles.

Every RYA qualification beyond Competent Crew requires sea time. Day Skipper wants 100 miles and 5 days. Yachtmaster Offshore wants 2,500 miles and 50 night hours. The syllabus is perfectly clear about what you need. What nobody tells you is how to actually get on boats.

Commercial mile building courses work. They're structured, professional, and guaranteed to deliver the miles. They're also priced accordingly.

A weekend pottering around the Solent will set you back £150-300. A week-long Channel crossing runs £500-900. If you're chasing 2,500 miles for Yachtmaster Offshore, you're looking at thousands in course fees before you even book the exam. At that point you might start wondering if buying your own boat would be cheaper. (It wouldn't. But you'd think about it.)

The alternative is cost-sharing. Real passages with real skippers who need an extra pair of hands. You contribute toward fuel, marina fees, and provisions. The actual costs of sailing somewhere, not instructor fees and profit margins layered on top.

Same miles. Same night hours. Same logbook entries. Your wallet remains on speaking terms with you.

Different qualifications need different amounts of sea time, and it's worth knowing exactly what you're aiming for before you start collecting miles like stamps.

Day Skipper is achievable in a couple of long weekends if you plan it right. Coastal Skipper steps things up and requires 2 days where you were properly in charge. Not just "I helmed for a bit while the skipper made tea" but actually skippering.

For Yachtmaster, half of everything needs to be in tidal waters, so endless Mediterranean miles in flat calm won't quite cut it. And there's the 10-year rule: all qualifying sea time must be within 10 years of your exam. That glorious Fastnet you crewed in 2012? Lovely memories, but it's expired. Your logbook won't update itself.

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The traditional routes into sailing all seem to assume you already know people with boats.

Yacht clubs are brilliant if you're already a member with connections. If you're not, walking into the bar and asking "anyone need crew?" takes a certain kind of confidence that most people don't have after their third rejection.

"Borrow a friend's boat" assumes you have friends with boats. Most people don't. If you did, you probably wouldn't be reading this.

Racing crews often want experienced sailors who already know what they're doing. There's a chicken-and-egg problem here that nobody seems keen to solve.

Delivery companies want competent crew who reduce the skipper's workload, not people treating the trip as a training exercise.

None of this helps if you're starting from scratch without a network. What actually works is finding skippers who are actively looking for crew and showing them you're worth having aboard.

Here's the thing: keen crew who contribute, learn quickly, and don't mind doing the washing up are worth their weight in chocolate digestives. Skippers know this. Many actively prefer taking on enthusiastic beginners over experienced sailors with strong opinions about how things should be done.

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When you're browsing crew positions, you want to see the details that matter upfront. Route and dates, obviously. Estimated miles and night hours so you know what you'll actually log. Whether it's coastal, offshore, or tidal waters. What role you'll be filling. And crucially, how the costs are being shared.

If a listing is vague about any of this, keep scrolling. Good skippers know what information crew need and provide it without being asked.

When a skipper gets ten applications for their Channel crossing, they're going to pick based on the profiles in front of them. A complete profile with a clear goal beats a blank page every time.

What skippers want to know is pretty straightforward. What experience do you have, even if it's limited? What qualifications do you hold, honestly stated? What are you working toward? And what do you actually bring to a trip?

Enthusiasm counts when you're starting out. "I've done my Competent Crew, I'm working toward Day Skipper, and I'm keen to learn" is a perfectly good pitch. You don't need to pretend you're more experienced than you are.

In fact, overselling non-existent experience is the fastest way to get passed over. Skippers can spot it immediately, usually within about ten minutes of leaving the marina. And then you get to spend the rest of the trip being found out, which is uncomfortable for everyone.

If you've got miles on the board already, show them. Logged passages, qualifications held, specific skills like navigation, engine maintenance, or watch leading. Skippers planning longer passages want crew who reduce their workload. Prove you can do that and you'll have your pick of trips.

Your application message is your first impression, and a surprising number of people waste it completely.

The best applications are specific to the trip. Mention something about the route that appeals to you. Explain what you're hoping to gain. Be clear about your experience level without either underselling or overselling. Ask a sensible question that shows you've actually read the listing.

Generic copy-paste messages are obvious and get treated accordingly. "Hi I'd love to join your trip" tells the skipper nothing useful and suggests you've sent the same message to fifty other listings. Which you probably have, but you don't want it to show.

Once you start logging miles, it's tempting to take any sailing you can get. But if you're working toward a specific qualification, it pays to be strategic about which trips you chase.

Short on night hours? Look specifically for passages with planned overnight legs. Need tidal experience? Channel crossings, the Solent, Bristol Channel, and Scottish waters all count. Building toward skipper time? Find opportunities where you might get to take watches or lead legs, even if you're not officially in charge.

The satisfaction of watching your numbers climb toward your target is genuine. But more practically, knowing exactly what gaps you need to fill tells you which opportunities to prioritise. No point doing another gentle day sail in the Solent if what you actually need is night hours.

Finding crew positions solves the "getting on boats" problem. It's a real problem, and solving it matters. But it doesn't replace actually learning to sail properly.

Do your theory and practical courses. The structured learning matters. Build real competence, because miles are a minimum threshold for examination, not the actual goal. Develop genuine seamanship, since experience only counts if you're paying attention and learning from it.

The point of all this is to become someone who can skipper a boat safely in the conditions you're qualified for. If you tick the boxes without actually learning anything, you'll find out the hard way when something goes wrong and you don't know what to do. That's not a situation anyone wants to be in, least of all you.

Every passage needs proper documentation: date and duration, departure and arrival ports, distance covered, night hours, weather conditions, your role onboard, and the skipper's signature for paper logs.

Digital logbooks are easier to maintain and considerably harder to lose. When you apply for a Yachtmaster exam, you'll fill out a sea miles log for the examiner. Having everything in one searchable place beats hunting through old notebooks and trying to decipher your own handwriting from three years ago, written in a Force 6 while the boat was heeled at 30 degrees.