One of the first practical decisions you’ll make when booking an RYA course isn’t about which certification to go for it’s about who else is going to be on the boat with you. Do you join a scheduled course alongside other students, or do you book the boat privately for yourself, your family, or your own group?
Both routes lead to the same RYA certificate. Both are run by the same instructors, on the same boats, to the same training standard. But the experience of getting there the pace, the cost, the flexibility, even the friendships you walk away with can look quite different depending on which one you choose. Here’s how to think it through.
How Group Bookings Work
A group course at Prosailing Malta means you’re joining a scheduled sailing date alongside other students who’ve booked independently. Our groups stay small by design typically a maximum of five students per instructor so even a “group” course here doesn’t mean being one of fifteen people crowded onto a single deck. You still get real time at the helm, real hands-on instruction, and an instructor who actually knows your name and where you’re struggling.
What group bookings add is a shared learning environment. You’re training alongside people who are, most likely, in a similar position: new to sailing, working through the same nerves about their first tack or their first time coming alongside a pontoon. There’s something genuinely useful about watching someone else attempt a manoeuvre before you try it yourself, and about the camaraderie that builds over a week of shared meals, shared cabins, and a shared goal. Many of our students who’ve done Competent Crew or Day Skipper courses as part of a group tell us the people they trained with became as memorable as the sailing itself.
Group courses also run on fixed, published dates, which makes planning straightforward if your schedule is flexible. You book onto a date that suits you, and the course goes ahead with whoever else has signed up.
How Private Courses Work
A private course means the boat, the instructor, and the training schedule belong entirely to you and whoever you bring along your partner, your family, a group of friends, or colleagues from work. Nobody else joins, and the course is built specifically around your dates, your pace, and your priorities.
This matters more than it might sound. If you’re travelling to Malta specifically to train and your available dates don’t line up with a scheduled group course, a private booking removes that constraint entirely you choose the week, and we build the course around it. It also means the instructor’s full attention is on your group’s specific goals for the entire time, rather than balancing the needs of several students who may be progressing at different speeds.
Private courses are a natural fit for families sailing together, couples who want to learn as a pair without splitting up during exercises, or groups of friends who’d rather spend a training week with people they already know. They also suit anyone who simply prefers a quieter, more personalised pace more time on manoeuvres you find tricky, less time waiting your turn at the helm.
The trade-off is cost. Because you’re booking the boat and instructor exclusively, private courses carry a higher price than an individual place on a group date. As a reference point, our RYA Start Yachting weekend runs at a per-person rate on scheduled group dates, with a separate flat rate for booking the same course privately the private rate reflects the exclusivity of having the boat to yourselves rather than per-head pricing.
Weighing the Two Against Each Other
Choose a group booking if:
- You’re travelling alone or as a pair and don’t mind training alongside new people
- Your schedule is flexible enough to fit around published course dates
- You like the idea of a shared learning experience and the social side of a training week
- You want the most cost-effective route to your certification
Choose a private course if:
- You’re booking for a family, couple, or existing group of friends
- Your available dates don’t match the published schedule
- You want the instructor’s full attention focused only on your group’s pace and goals
- You have specific priorities extra time on anchoring, more night-sailing practice, a focus on chartering skills that you’d rather shape the course around
- Privacy and flexibility matter more to you than sharing costs with strangers
Neither option changes the certification you walk away with. An RYA Competent Crew or Day Skipper certificate earned in a group course carries exactly the same weight as one earned privately. What changes is the shape of the week that gets you there.
A Middle Ground: Private Group Bookings
It’s worth knowing there’s a third option that often gets overlooked: booking a private course for your own group of multiple people say, four or five friends or family members rather than assuming private automatically means solo or paired training. This gets you the exclusivity of a private booking (your own dates, your own instructor, no strangers joining) while spreading the cost across everyone in your party, which often brings the per-person price close to what you’d pay joining a scheduled group course. If you’ve got a group of friends who all want to learn together, this is usually the option worth asking about first.
What Doesn’t Change, Whichever You Pick
It’s worth being clear about what stays constant regardless of format, because this is often where people assume there’s a bigger gap than there really is. The boats are the same you’re not being downgraded to a smaller or older vessel because you chose a group date, nor upgraded to something fancier because you booked privately. The instructors are the same qualified RYA team either way, and the syllabus you’re assessed against doesn’t shift depending on how you booked. A Day Skipper certificate is a Day Skipper certificate, full stop.
What genuinely does shift is pacing and attention. In a group, the instructor is managing several students’ progress at once, which usually means a natural, comfortable rhythm enough repetition for everyone to grasp a manoeuvre, enough variety to keep the week interesting, and enough peer learning to reinforce what you’re picking up. In a private course, that same instructor’s attention is undivided, which tends to suit people who want to move faster through skills they find intuitive and linger longer on the ones that don’t come as naturally. Neither approach is objectively better training they’re just better suited to different personalities and different goals.
Still Not Sure? Ask Us Directly
Course format is one of those decisions that’s genuinely easier to make with a quick conversation than by reading through pricing pages on your own. If you tell us how many people, you’re booking for, how flexible your dates are, and what you’re hoping to get out of the course, we can tell you straightaway whether a group date, a private booking, or a private group works out best for you both in terms of experience and cost.
Get in touch with the Prosailing Malta team to talk through your options, and we’ll help you find the format that fits how you actually want to learn to sail.
