FAQs

Urban Truant has designed excellent online courses that guide you through everything you need to know. We have included intelligently-created graphics and animations to help ensure you grasp every concept.

In addition to the modern custom-built portal, our experienced and knowledgeable instructors will support you from the moment you first access the course until you successfully pass your exam(s).

Whilst other online courses are available, Sailing Course Online is the most concise, interesting and up-to-date course on the market. As Urban Truant is also an IT business, we additionally offer first-class technical support should you need it!

Urban Truant is the number one choice for online RYA theory courses.

Yes. We are pleased to offer discounts to loyal customers, including: 10% discount for two or more theory courses purchased at the same time, and 10% discount off a subsequent practical course. Please contact us on equire@urbantruant.co.uk should you have any queries about this.

All queries will be answered within 24 hours - and usually much quicker than this. We recommend you first log your question via Urban Truant's unique Help Messaging Centre - this ensures your query is sent to all of our instructors and also enables them to identify exactly which page you were working on when you encountered the problem.

The office is staffed weekdays from 09:00 to 5.30 so if your query is very urgent you can follow up your Help Message with a phone call: +44 (023) 80 458 578.

Yes - if that is your preferred method of communication (and this can be a good idea for certain types of question!). We also offer FaceTime for Apple users. To arrange a Skype/FaceTime call, first log your request via our Help Messaging Centre and we will agree a mutually convenient time to this.

All payments made on Urban Truant's Sailing Course Online website are done via an encrypted service (Sage Pay). Urban Truant will not have access to your card details and therefore cannot store or hold or store any card details.

The course is exactly the same as the classroom course and the certificate is the same, it will have been marked as non-invigilated. If you required the certificate for commercial purposes you will need to have the exam invigilated by a professional person.

Once you have completed the RYA Day Skipper or RYA Yachtmaster Exam you will have 2 years complementary access to the system in order to revisit any of the information.

Ideally yes. A desk, the dining room table - anywhere you can spread out and concentrate. Your charts are quite large (over 70 x 90cm) and you will need a flat surface to make accurate measurements and calculations using your plotter and dividers.

No - upon successful completion of your course you will receive an RYA theory certificate. You will then need to do a separate practical course: Day Skipper, Coastal Skipper, or Yachtmaster Practical Certificate of Competence.

You will need to attend a practical course at a RYA recognised sea school. Urban Truant runs practical courses - please contact us if you are interested. Discounts are available for existing customers!

Please note, you may also require a valid RYA First Aid certificate and a VHF Certificate of Comptence (Short-Range Certificate).

Urban Truant gives you 8 months to complete your online RYA theory course. Experience shows that most students complete their course within 4 to 6 months. Should you need to extend your course beyond the 8 months, you can buy a course extension, at a cost of £30 per person. You can buy the course online on our website (go to the My Accounts page where there is a tab called 'Course Extensions'), or contact the office on +44 (01489) 250 040 to complete a card payment over the phone.

We have designed excellent online courses that guide you through everything you need to know and use intelligently-created graphics and animations. Urban Truant will support you from the moment you first access the course until you successfully pass your exam(s). We take the time to understand why you might find a particular topic tricky and extra help is always available. If you complete all of the coursework, we are confident that you will pass your exam.

Every exam paper is carefully marked and if any answers are incorrect we will first review your coursework and then work with you to improve your learning. We may then ask you to re-sit the question using another similar exercise. We will not pass you unless you demonstrate the required level of learning, but our instructors have the experience, knowledge and resources to help you achieve that standard.

Yes. Urban Truant recognises that we all lead busy lives and need to be able to access courses through a variety of devices. Our software is thoroughly tested to work on all Operating Systems, including Macs.

We recommend that you use a desktop computer, laptop and tablets where possible to complete your course - this gives you a larger screen to work from, especially useful when cross-referencing with your chartwork, tidal heights etc.

Our software works well on smart phones, although you may find some modules more challenging via this medium, where you would benefit from seeing the information on a larger screen. You may find accessing course content via your smart phone useful during revision of more straight-forward modules.

You need an internet connection to access your online course content. Also, some aspects of the course - for example, chartwork or tidal calculations require room to spread out your paperwork next to your computer (a typical RYA chart is almost a meter squared!). For this reason we do not recommend that you attempt to sit your entire course whilst commuting on the train.

In saying that ... train journeys provide excellent opportunities to revise, practice what you have learned, read your RYA handbook etc, so you can certainly use this time productively!

No, provided that the computer configuration meets the minimum requirements and you have access to the internet.