Trying to decide on a training course? Help is on hand as Adrian Porter dusts off his dunce cap and presents six of the best courses you can do. 

The sea is a siren. It draws us in with its calm beautiful looks, sings to us the sound of water lovingly lapping against the hull and places in each of us an unquenchable yearning never to land, And then it all goes tits up. Yes, the sea can be a harsh place, charts can be a nightmare to decipher if you not sure how, and to top it off, your iPhone just ran out of battery - again.

There is no requirement to train before you call yourself ‘Skipper’ and take charge of a boat, but if you want to prevent your vessel becoming nothing more than a popular dive site, you need a little bit of know-how. Here are six excellent courses you may want to consider . . .

1) Level Two

Put simply, the Level Two Course will take you from an enthusiastic novice to a reasonable boater in a jam-packed, two-day bombardment of knowledge and training. With no previous experience required, you learn how to manoeuvre, moor, rescue a man overboard, pick up a buoy, learn the basic Rule of the Road, read a chart, learn about flares and more. The course can be done as either a coastal or inland course and your resulting certificate will carry the appropriate endorsement. True, you won’t be making ocean passages or discussing the merits of sextants but you will have a basic grounding in all the subjects that matter for making short coastal hops in fairly familiar waters.

For the full report pick up the November issue of Sports Boat and RIB magazine today - Subscribe here