Worldwide, the main training courses for dinghy sailing are developed by the Royal Yacht Association – we provide those RYA courses at Tynemouth. Most people start sailing with multi day courses normally referred to as RYA1 Start Sailing and RYA2 Basic Skills. The RYA has more details here for whats involved.
We typically run RYA dinghy courses on Saturdays at Tynemouth early enough in the season so you can continue into Sunday morning adult improver / coaching sessions to really get a feel for the sport & build time on the water. Don’t feel the need to wait for that though – contact us or just turn up and chat Wed evenings through the year or sunday mornings from May to August (10 am or 1pm)
The club has all the gear you will need – just turn up willing to learn and if the weather is good you will have a great time. If the wind is too strong or there is fog (which occasionally happens) we switch focus to more of the theory or powerboat based training.
Each course is typically held on 5 saturdays across May & June with fallback dates if the weather should be too poor for sailing.
As we only run courses once each year, they are typically in strong demand. If you aren’t entirely sure its for you, the ideal chance to check is our “Discover Sailing” open day on Saturday 9th May.
If you want to learn to sail, we recommend you block the dates out asap in your diary. 2026 Dates are:
Open day 9th May,
RYA 1: 16th, 23rd & 30th May:
RYA 2: 6th & 13th June
You can book for the sail training courses 1 & 2 on our Spond site which also gives further details, a “what to wear” sheet etc.
(There is a separate set of RYA courses and qualifications, Competent Crew, Day Skipper etc. for those who want to learn to sail yachts – but we don’t provide those at the club as we don’t have facilities for those larger boats. Courses are available nearby at Royal Quays, North Shields or at Royal Northumberland Yacht Club, Blyth.)