Flying Fish Sailing: an in-depth interview with Andy Fairclough

It’s a long story and goes back nearly 30 years. I created Flying Fish in the UK, and we were looking for an alternative destination that would allow us to make better use of the British winter. I already had connections in Australia and at Middle Harbour, so we developed what was initially a UK–Australia Yachtmaster Fast Track programme — a concept that Flying Fish pioneered in the UK.

The programme proved so popular that one thing led to another and we evolved into a permanent local training centre at Middle Harbour.

Today we have a strong Australian customer base, but we still receive plenty of students through Flying Fish UK and agents in Europe who come specifically for our professional Fast Track programmes. These have become something of a benchmark for people entering the professional yachting and superyacht industries.

There’s also a nice circularity to it now. Many of our graduates from over the years are captains and senior crew on yachts all over the world, and they become part of the network that helps the next generation get started.

We love Middle Harbour. It’s visually spectacular, but more importantly it’s an excellent and surprisingly challenging training ground. There are lots of bays and different wind effects, generally plenty of breeze, and we can be out into the Tasman Sea very quickly for offshore training or down into the main harbour.

For an international student there’s also something fairly special about leaving a cold, grey European winter and suddenly finding yourself sailing on Sydney Harbour.

Compared with the UK we have less tide to contend with, but Sydney and the Tasman Sea provide plenty of other challenges, so it’s a very good environment in which to learn.

That’s a big part of the training advice we provide before someone books.

For somebody wanting to work internationally on sailing yachts or in the superyacht industry, the RYA/MCA Yachtmaster is generally the key qualification. It has become an international industry standard, helped by the fact that so many commercial and superyachts operate under British or other Red Ensign flags.

For somebody working commercially on sailing vessels in Australia, the AMSA Sailing Master pathway is important. The two therefore fit together very neatly, and for many professional candidates we would recommend ultimately having both.

Australian Sailing is excellent for areas such as dinghy sailing and Safety & Sea Survival, and we’ve worked with them for many years. We’re also an Australian Registered Training Organisation and deliver AMSA-related training, with further programmes under development.

Typically they might start with an RYA Start Yachting weekend.

They’ll arrive at the boat, meet the instructor and the rest of the crew — which is part of the fun — and they will already have had access to some pre-course learning. We start with a safety briefing and introduce some of the basic equipment: winches, clutches, lines and so on.

Then we get sailing fairly quickly. We’ll normally begin reaching backwards and forwards across the wind, tacking at each end and rotating everybody through the different positions. From there we introduce sailing upwind, the no-go zone and tacking towards an upwind objective, followed by sailing downwind.

By the end of that first day they’ve begun to understand the points of sail and, more importantly, have actually been sailing the boat rather than sitting there watching somebody else do it.

It’s a very broad mix. We get Australians and international students joining our professional Fast Track programmes because they want to make sailing their career.

For some that means the superyacht industry. For others it means becoming a charter skipper, instructor, mate or professional skipper here in Australia. We’ve had former students go on to skipper in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race and work on all sorts of commercial and private yachts around the world.

The important point is that Yachtmaster isn’t really the end of the journey — it’s the beginning of being a professional skipper.

You get out what you put in.

There’s a substantial theory component as well as the practical sailing, so the people who study, participate, work as part of the team and really immerse themselves in the programme generally do well.

People also learn at different speeds, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We sometimes jokingly call one option the “slow-track Fast Track”, where somebody spreads the programme out, sails independently between modules and builds their experience progressively. That can work particularly well for local students.

Motivation and participation are probably more important than arriving as some sort of sailing superstar.

Absolutely. One route is to complete a Fast Track programme, gain Yachtmaster and potentially an AMSA Sailing Master qualification, and then build professional experience.

Some graduates go down the instructor route. They might qualify as an RYA Cruising Instructor and work for Flying Fish or another sailing school, initially teaching weekend Learn to Sail courses and gradually building command time.

I tend to think of a newly qualified Yachtmaster rather like a newly qualified pilot. You’ve earned the licence, but what really matters next is building experience and command time.

Others head directly into the superyacht industry. They may initially be employed as deckhands — which inevitably involves plenty of cleaning and polishing — but having Yachtmaster already puts them in a good position to progress.

Personally, I like the route where people skipper smaller vessels early in their career and build genuine command experience before moving onto bigger boats.

It gives students quite a useful international pathway.

Someone can train with us in Sydney, for example, and then go to Flying Fish UK for STCW training before heading into the European superyacht industry, including through our connections in Antibes. Others might complete sailing qualifications here and Yachtmaster Power training in the UK.

It works the other way too. British and European students come to Sydney for part of their training. It turns professional training into a bit of an international adventure as well as a qualification.

Our main training yachts include Beneteau First 40.7s and a First 40. They give us a very good balance between performance and comfort.

For training, we want boats that actually teach people to sail. Some modern cruising and charter yachts — the “floating caravans”, as I sometimes rather unfairly call them — can make life very comfortable but don’t necessarily give students the same feel for the raw sailing skills.

For offshore work we also have Arctos, a locally built 55-foot Radford cutter, which is a substantial and very capable offshore training yacht.

Personality is key.

Obviously instructors need the qualifications and sailing experience, but we’re looking for supportive leaders, good communicators and team players — people who genuinely enjoy teaching and working with other people.

A good skipper needs to look after both the boat and the crew. We sometimes sum it up as: happy boat, happy crew, happy skipper.

Practical and technical skills are extremely valuable too. Somebody coming from an engineering or diesel mechanic background, for example, brings another whole layer of useful knowledge to a yacht.

A lot of those numbers come from people doing things such as boat licences, Try Yachting and recreational sailing, alongside the longer professional programmes.

The key is understanding what somebody is actually trying to achieve. Courses need clearly defined outcomes, but good customer service and instruction means understanding the individual as well.

The person who wants an enjoyable first day on the water has a very different objective from somebody preparing for a Yachtmaster exam or changing careers, and we need to deliver appropriately for both.

Sydney is a pretty good place to sail all year round.

Personally, I particularly like autumn — March, April and May. The water is still warm and the strong summer southerlies have generally lost a bit of their grunt, provided we don’t get an East Coast Low.

Spring is excellent too, and winter can produce some beautiful sailing days. You just need to keep an eye out for the stronger winter westerlies.

People often worry that everybody else will know more than they do, or that they won’t fit into the crew.

They very quickly discover that everyone brings different strengths and that becoming a crew is itself part of learning to sail.

I quite like Tuckman’s old model of team development: forming, storming, norming and performing. A yacht crew does something very similar. People work out how to communicate, establish routines and operating procedures, and gradually become a team. That process is actually a big part of the fun.

We’re doing quite a lot with online learning at the moment and building out our online academy with short courses that support the practical training. The idea isn’t to replace time on the water but to make that practical time more effective by allowing people to arrive better prepared.

As for boats — boats are always a menace! But we’re looking at a larger RIB and potentially another offshore yacht at some point.

Probably just that sailing is much more accessible than people imagine.

You don’t need to have grown up sailing, own a boat or know all the terminology before you start. We regularly see complete beginners progress into very capable sailors and, in some cases, professional skippers.

Whether somebody wants a great weekend on Sydney Harbour, the confidence to charter a yacht on holiday, or an entirely new career, it all starts in much the same way: get on a boat and have a go.