Learn SKS online with the exam trainer

01

The SKS question catalogue

The official catalogue for the Coastal Skipper Certificate contains 638 questions. Keelwake carries all of them in the official wording, split by topic exactly as the examination follows them:

• Seemannschaft — 309 questions
• Navigation — 118 questions
• Schifffahrtsrecht — 110 questions
• Wetterkunde — 101 questions

The wording of the questions and the model answers is the official one and is not rephrased. What Keelwake adds is the order in which you meet them.

02

How the SKS exam works

The theory exam for the Coastal Skipper Certificate lasts 90 minutes and draws 30 questions, composed as follows:

• 9 questions from Navigation
• 7 questions from Schifffahrtsrecht
• 5 questions from Wetterkunde
• 9 questions from Seemannschaft

03

How the SKS is marked

Every question is marked with 2, 1 or 0 points: fully known, partly known, not known. That makes 60 points possible.

Passing requires 39 of 60 points. Between 33 and 39 points there is an oral re-examination rather than an outright fail — Keelwake shows that range separately, because it decides whether you resit or merely talk.

04

What the topics cover

The examination follows fixed topic areas. These are the terms behind them — each links to its explanation in the glossary:

Navigation — Courses: true, magnetic, compass · Variation · Deviation · Dead reckoning · Bearings & fixing your position · Chart & chart datum · Lateral buoyage (IALA A).

KVR & Recht — Responsibilities between vessels (Rule 18) · Sailing vessels among themselves (Rule 12) · Overtaking (Rule 13) · Head-on situation (Rule 14) · Crossing situation (Rule 15) · Lights: power-driven vessel · Lights: sailing vessel.

Wetter — Beaufort scale · Highs and lows · Warm, cold and occluded fronts · Land and sea breeze · Sea state & swell · Air pressure & barometer · Veering & backing wind.

Seemannschaft — Bowline · Clove hitch · Figure-of-eight knot · Making fast to a cleat · Tacking & gybing · Reefing · Man-overboard manoeuvre.

05

How Keelwake trains the SKS

Keelwake is not a question dump. Every question sits in a Leitner box: what you know moves back, what you miss comes round again the next day. That is why 638 questions are workable at all.

• Exam simulation with the official composition and the real time limit.
• Accuracy per topic — so you practise what is weak, not what is comfortable.
• Flashcards for the questions you keep missing.
• Offline on iPhone, iPad and Mac — and in any browser with the same account.

Keelwake is free; the SKS unlocks once for 6,99 €. No subscription, no running cost — bought once, yours.

06

The 300 nautical miles

The theory is only one half of the Sportküstenschifferschein. Admission to the practical exam requires 300 nautical miles on a sailing yacht in coastal waters, documented. That trips up more candidates than the questions do — not because it is hard, but because nobody counted along the way.

Which miles count, whether tacking legs count, and what the proof has to look like are questions the official rules leave more open than most people expect. We have gone through them with the primary sources:

• How nautical miles are counted — tacking legs, course over ground, etmal
• Which miles count towards the SKS
• What the mileage record has to contain
• Taking the theory before the miles are complete

Keelwake counts these miles from your logbook while you sail — coastal and inland kept apart, because only coastal miles count — and produces the record as a PDF for the examination office. That is the part no question trainer does.