Saturday 12 th November 2022
I had been looking to do my RYA Sea Survival course for some time, but for some strange reason it is not offered by many sea schools in the Devon and Cornwall area.
One of the Sea Staff at the Ocean Youth Trust runs his own RYA Training Centres in Dorset and I decided to support him and jumped in the car on a cold November morning to drive to Dorset for the course.
After several hours driving the car GPS announced that we had arrived, but this did not look right. A residential street and no sign of a swimming pool nearby. I double checked the email that Dom had sent and realised my early morning navigation error - I had transposed two of the figures in the post code and was still 15 miles from the course!
On finally arriving in the classroom some 45 minutes late I apologised and blamed 'a bit of a cock up on the navigation front' in true Jimmy, from The Rise and Fall of Reggie Perrin, style.
The morning was spent looking at the theory of how to stay alive if it hits the fan.
The afternoon was spent in the pool doing a number of drills that took me back to my Royal Lifesaving Society Bronze Medallion and Silver Cross days as a teenager, with the added delight of playing sardines in an inflatable life raft.
The big takeaway from this was do everything you can not to get in a life raft.
A very enjoyable day and do wish that more RYA Training Centres offered the course as it is one of the most useful courses I've done.