- I couldn’t recommend this course highly enough, Jojo is a fantastic teacher with a wealth of experience. She has an engaging and practical approach which perfectly balances providing the necessary technical knowledge with real world application. Not only that I also got to meet some great people with a shared passion for traditional sailing skills.
- The Yachtmaster theory course is challenging, but Jojo eases you into it by introducing a few different topics at once at a basic level then builds on each one throughout the week. This makes it easier to learn than trying to take on a whole subject in one session.
- Jojo is extremely knowledgeable about the subject and is a very experienced sailor. Her experience gives her many anecdotal stories which she can link to the subjects to bring life to them. I will be looking out for any future training sessions that Jojo is teaching!
- Having navigated with celestial navigation since the days before GPS I thought it would be an easy thing to dust off the old sextant for my qualification sail leading up to the start of the Golden Globe Race. I soon realised how much one can forget! JoJo’s Celestial course was the perfect way to become reacquainted with the art of navigating with sextant. The sight reduction forms are now laminated and will be my go to for sight reductions on the GGR. Also, the small class allowed for easy one on one interaction. Thanks JoJo for a great course!
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As a practical person who lives with dyslexia and struggles to sit still, the prospect of six Zoom sessions over three weekends frightened the life out of me. I needn’t have worried. The course is exceptionally well-structured. Sharing the ‘virtual room’ with sailors working toward their Ocean Yachtmaster syllabus, we moved from the fascinating history of navigating to the practicalities of data retrieval. The course starts slowly as we get to grips with basic theory, visualising the Celestial Sphere and understanding how Declination and Greenwich Hour Angle relate to our position on deck. Using a series of brilliant proformas, we gradually worked our way from those initial concepts toward plotting a fix. The abundance of exercises at every level, even the basic arithmetic of adding or subtracting degrees and minutes, meant I could return to the numbers each evening and reinforce the process at my own pace.
- Having recently completed the Yachtmaster theory training course I can wholeheartedly recommend Jojo Pickering as an exceptional course leader and tutor. The yachtmaster training was intensive and thorough but Jojo made the theory come to life with real life examples from her wealth of sailing experience around the world. Its always good to know you are being tutored by a real expert in their subject and Jojo always had the patience and found the time to help students master some of the trickier aspects of the course.