NAVatHOME was first started by Vic and Lyn. In 1997 Lyn and Vic met whilst he was working as a sailing instructor at Conway School of Yachting. Lyn was taking her Coastal Skipper practical course, and Vic the sly old devil spied her from a different boat!

The love of sailing was shared and resulted in the two of them starting charter company with the name Allabroad using a new boat to charter their way around the world. Unfortunately, due to serious problems with their brand new yacht, the trip was curtailed at the port of Gibraltar. The time in Gibraltar allowed them to realise the sail training potential of Gibraltar and the Mediteranean, as a result Allabroad Sailing Academy was born. Allabroad was an instant success, so much so that it was not long before a second yacht was bought and Vic packed Lyn up and sent her off to take her instructors exam.

At about the same time, Vics' younger brother Don was running a Yacht charter company in Western Australia called South West Yacht Charters sailing in Geographe Bay in Western Australia. As the evidence of the success of sail training schemes in Gibraltar proved the viability of a sail training school, Don obtained his yachmaster instructors certifcates, and his master class 5 qualification and subsequently started a similar school which also proved a success and continued to grow.

During their time with Allabroad it became apparent that the traditional learning schemes were heavily dependent on the passion from the instructors, the surrounding students, and the experience of the school. Many students had been limited by the classroom time available and did not have a thorough understanding of the course material, and some students were often left behind with the pace of the material. There was a serious need for a good online learning course that allowed students to learn the material in depth at their own pace. There had been a constant flow of students complaining about poor tuition especially distant learning tuition.

The beginnings of what would be Nav-at-Home was born in 2005 when Vic decided to write an online Day Skipper theory course, however, he was not aware that he needed RYA permission to run them. In retrospect the course was poorly written, although some of the animations were quite good and some are still used today. The main thing was that students did complete it with positive encouragement. The response pushed Vic to write the Coastal Skipper / Yachtmaster course which was so good they had to rewrite the Day Skipper course to keep up with it.
In 2008 Vic and Lyn realised they were onto something when the RYA came knocking about potentially running courses without recognition. The RYA were strict but fair, and went through the course work and approved it with some minor changes.

NAVatHOME Australia was subsequently launched by Don and since then has started to grow in popularity.

With the popularity of the courses, the offerings increased which included the development of the Ocean Yachtmster course. The Ocean Yachtmaster certificate is one of the most challenging RYA qualifications to obtain, however again the limitations of classroom training resulted in many students unable to adequately explain how and why Ocean theory works.

As a flagship course, and one that contained subjects that were passionate for both Vic and Lyn, they developed the extensive Ocean course. Months were spent making the animations, Mativation would come and go but eventually the course was finished and ready for review, before it was sent to the RYA for approval. It ended up going through several of their examiners because not all of them were up to scratch with the ocean and did not fully understand themselves. It subsequently was approved with good feedback from the RYA and tt it is now a successful course with every single student passing their assessment but it is a specialist course with a limited take up.

Vic and Lyn have continued to work in the background to develop the courses, and introduce new material ensuring the courses are up to date and relevant.

With the success of the NAVatHOME curriculum, the online theory courses were made available to other schools to take advantage of and promote to their students. Whilst some schools have already offered distance education, other schools have not had the capacity to do this and with the depth and thoroughness of the Nav-at-Home courses, we have worked with the RYA to allow our courses to be offered by other schools whilst keeping within RYA guidelines. The RYA are quite strict on how all courses should be run which helps to keep standards to such a high level. Our courses were given the nod of approval from the head of cruising and here we are.

Our courses have become a part of who we are, and as you go through them you will see snippets of the very dry Punch family humour. It has crept into the course from a few too many late nights putting this all together for you. It's ok if sometimes you don't get the humour, alot of people don't. But its ok, you only have to put up with it for a short time.

For anyone who has taken the trouble to read this far we wish them happy sailing and hope they book with us for a great course.

Regards to all.

Vic, Lyn, Don, Helen and Alan