About Us

RYA Training Centre

We are really fortunate to have a fantastic group of instructors that we have built up over several years. They are all commercial skippers as well as instructors, which is not a requirement for many of the courses we teach but is a standard we set and a level of experience and competence that we demand from all those who teach for us. We only use the best instructors we know; some older with years of experience, some younger but at the top of their game – all friendly and extremely capable, thereby ensuring you are in the best hands when out on the water.

We have Powerboat Trainer Laurence West as Chief Instructor of the Powerboat School enabling us to offer a wide range of RYA powerboat courses from the introductory Powerboat Level 1 right through to Powerboat Instructor Training. He is a very experienced and highly regarded powerboat Instructor and commercial powerboat skipper, as well as teaching several other marine disciplines including windsurfing, dinghy sailing and personal watercraft. As a trainer he teaches instructors how to teach on powerboats, and knows his stuff inside out.

Our School Principal, Adam Wilson, is both an RYA Yachtmaster Instructor and RYA Advanced Powerboat Instructor, and is the Chief instructor on the Motor Cruising side. He is also a commercially endorsed Yachtmaster Ocean (both power and sail) and when time allows still keeps his hand in skippering ribs, motor boats & sailing yachts commercially, in addition to teaching and running the school.

We are based in Lymington Yacht Haven, which is (in our opinion) the friendliest marina in The Solent. Our offices and classrooms are based just off the water in the marina, giving us a comfortable shore base from where we start our water based courses, and from where we teach a wide range of RYA theory courses.

The Motor Cruiser we teach on is an immaculate Sealine F42/5, a 45 foot flybridge motor cruiser called Oceanique.   She is big & beautiful, with twin engines & twin props on shafts, and is great to learn big-boat handling on.   For our Powerboat courses we use a large fleet of high quality Ribcraft 7.8 metre RIBs (Rigid Inflatable Craft) with smooth, fuel efficient 225hp & 250hp outboards. The photos on this website are all of our boats that we use to teach on.

Waterproof clothing and lifejackets are supplied as standard for all our courses.

Lymington, The New Forest & The Solent

We genuinely cannot think of a better place to be based -we are situated in Lymington, in Hampshire, on the south coast of the UK between Bournemouth and Southampton. Lymington is located at the western end of The Solent, which is the stretch of sea between the mainland and the Isle of Wight. It is also on the south side of the New Forest National Park – some 90,000 acres of open heathland and woods.

Lymington Yacht Haven is the southernmost of the two marinas in Lymington and our offices and all our boats are based here giving us the flexibility to come on and off the water as often as we wish.   10 minutes downstream & we are straight out into the open waters of The Solent - 15 minutes later we can be at The Needles & beyond, or over towards Cowes, but we also have the shelter & protection of the Isle of Wight meaning we can run courses in almost any conditions & rarely have to cancel for bad weather.  

If you want a mix of activities, or are looking for alternative entertainment for anyone not coming on one of our courses, the combination of the water and the forest, with the Isle of Wight a hop by ferry to the south and the busy hubs of Southampton and Bournemouth nearby mean there is something here for even the hardest to please family member.