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Advanced Sailing Courses Tips
Take Advanced Sailing Lessons with Your Spouse
Many people would cringe at the thought of sailing with a spouse. Could just the two of us handle a sailboat? Can we really work together well enough to learn sailing as a duo? The answer to both questions is "yes." Some sailing classes--such as the Private Cruising Course for Two at Offshore Sailing School--are designed to teach couples to learn to sail as a team. When you first see the spacious, 41-foot sailing yacht on which you'll train, you may feel like you'll never be ready to sail it without an instructor. But, at the end of the week, after both classroom and on-water training, you will be qualified to dock, anchor, tack, chart, handle heavy water--all with just you and your spouse.
Offshore Sailing School offers these specially designed courses for those who want to master bareboat cruising or live aboard cruising. But, if you have not studied formally, you can take the school's unique fast-track instruction which combines a learn to sail course with bareboat or live aboard sailing instruction.
Also, you have plenty of time for other types of fun as you spend two nights at the Pink Shell Beach Resort & Spa. These private sailing classes come with US Sailing certifications, textbooks and meals aboard. By the end of the week, the two of you will feel confident taking control of a sailboat and organizing your own cruising vacation.
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Blue Water Cruising Course Offered
Offshore Sailing School Tip: Some sailors are content learning to sail close to the shore; others may venture offshore and return the same day. The most adventurous sailors want to learn advanced sailing techniques, the kind they will need if they set their sights on blue water cruising and coastal passage making. It's called blue water cruising because you’re sailing across deep indigo blue oceans with no land on the horizon, and ports-of-call hundreds or thousands of miles away.
If you are comfortable cruising or chartering boats that are 35 feet or longer and looking for a true blue water cruising experience, you should sign up for the Offshore Sailing School's most advanced sailing course –Coastal Passage Making. This course will teach you the ins and outs of long distance navigation, sailing at night, standing watch and even cooking meals while at sea. These advanced sailing lessons are offered from Tortola to St. Martin and back or from Canouan and throughout the Grenadines. You'll sail for six nights aboard a Moorings 50-foot yacht.
Offshore Sailing School is run by renowned sailing educators, Steve and Doris Colgate. All Offshore’s instructors are certified by US SAILING and Offshore’s cruising course instructors are USCG licensed captains. For the Coastal Passage Making course, a maximum of six students and two instructors are divided into two watches – three students and one instructor on each watch. The boat does not stop until it reaches its turning point destination and heads back (non-stop again) to the original port of embarkation. This course entitles students to earn US SAILING coastal Passage Making certification when you study blue water cruising with Offshore Sailing School.
You'll become an expert in many advanced sailing topics including: sail inventories for passages, open water seamanship, tide and current tables, impact of pressure systems, and navigating inlets, shoals and reefs. If you've ever dreamed of blue water cruising, this advanced sailing instruction is something you should do first.
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Sailing Courses Cover Right of Way Rules
If you want to learn sailing, you must be ready to take on a large degree of responsibility. Sailing is fun and there is nothing like the feeling on a sailboat when it's cruising free and easy. But, it only looks free and easy. It's actually hard work. Sailing classes, if they are well designed, will teach you how to avoid collisions and what the rules of the water are for various types of vessels. Here is some sailing instruction you are likely to get in a good sailing course:
If a boat is heading your way and you don't know if it's on a collision course, use this sailing tip: Note the bearing of the boat and use a compass or line it up with some item on the boat such as a lifeline or starchion. In a short time, take the bearing again. If it has not changed, you are on a collision course and must be ready to react.
Whether you are just beginning to learn sailing or our signed up for an advanced sailing course, you should review the rules of the water. A stand-on vessel has the right of way while a give-way vessel must alter a course to avoid collision. A leeward boat is the stand-on vessel and has the right of way. The windward boat has to keep clear or give way. A starboard tack boat is the stand-on vessel and has the right of way. A port tack boat has to keep clear. When over-taking, the boat ahead is the stand-on vessel. The over-taking boat has to keep clear.
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Look for Cruising Courses That Offer Variety
Offshore Sailing School Tip: Under sail, a cruising yacht might be defined as a sailboat that can sail through the night and has accommodations for the crew. This is what separates it from a dinghy or small keelboat. Take a look online or at marina showrooms. You'll find a tremendous difference between each yacht. Some yachts offer basic accommodations; others are more luxurious. If you are ready to head out on the open sea, you'll want to take a cruising course to ensure you’re well prepared. Just as there are different cruising yachts, there are different ways to organize your cruising courses. Select a school that offers beginner to advanced sailing instruction. Here are some examples:
Colgate Offshore Accelerated Sail Training (COAST): This series of cruising courses, designed by renowned expert, Steve Colgate is the fastest and most economical way to go from novice to an advanced level at a significant tuition savings. You can earn the equivalent of a sailing master's degree in two years.
Catamaran Live Aboard Cruising: Your classroom and home for the week is a beautiful 36-foot Moorings catamaran (two hulls) with three cabins, generous main salon and gallery area, hot water showers, swim deck shower, spacious cockpit, and all the equipment you need to learn to cruise while living comfortably aboard a stable catamaran.
Live Aboard Cruising: These hands-on sailing lessons help you master skills necessary to cruise or charter with confidence while living aboard a Moorings or 46-foot Hunter yacht.
Live Aboard Coastal Navigation: This cruising course follows either the Live Aboard Cruising course or Bareboat Cruising Preparation course and is offered exclusively on a Moorings 3800 or 4200 catamaran.
Each cruising course covers plenty of information specific to the course level, size and boat type you learn on. You can go as far as you want in our stair-step program. Cruising courses are offered for singles, couples, women-only and families.
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Sailing Lessons on Winch Safety
If you are just beginning to learn sailing, you might still be confused about which side of the boat is port and which is starboard. But, if you are already competent in basic sailing instruction, it may be time to take a sailing course designed to teach you advanced sailing and high performance techniques. While you might learn about winches in beginner sailing lessons, in advanced sailing courses you might perfect those techniques and learn more detail about how to use them best in high performance sailing situations. Here are some tips on winch safety:
*If you are easing the jib sheet to adjust for a course change, put one hand on the coils without your thumb sticking out where it can get caught and injured. Then, ease the line with the other hand.
*Use the hand on the coils for control. If you don't, the coils can stick and then suddenly jerk out. This can also cause injury.
*Always wrap the winch clockwise. Before you tack or jibe, wrap the lazy side winch one or two times to prepare for the maneuver. When it's time to tack or jibe, be aware of the tension before you uncleat it and hold tight. After the tack or jibe, release the working side, remove wraps and pull in on the new sheet.
*To safely add wraps as soon as there is pressure, take the line in one hand and pass it around the winch two or three times allowing the line to ease through your hands as it goes. Don't ease enough to let the line slip on the drum.
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Sailing Courses Should Offer Drills That Teach
Offshore Sailing School Tip: There are lots of sailing courses available. Many teach the same basic material, but only Offshore gives you more quality time on the water than any other sailing school. Some schools claim more time on the water but are they teaching the whole time? Offshore spends every minute on the water teaching, and bringing you ashore for lunch and other much appreciated personal needs.
A good sailing course is one that emphasizes drills to prepare you for difficult and unusual circumstances. A drill emphasized by sailing expert, Steve Colgate is a rudderless drill. You may never experience rudderless sailing, but at sea, you have to be prepared for anything. Here are a some steps used in a rudderless drill that you might learn in an advanced sailing course:
*Trim your jib mostly flat and ease your mainsail until the boat is balanced and sails straight ahead when the helm is released.
*Change course by trimming the main to head up and push the boom out to fall off the wind.
*When the bow starts swinging in one direction, you must immediately begin opposite procedures to counteract the swing.
*To tack, free the jib sheets and trim the mainsail hard. When the boat is past head-to-wind, trim the jib and ease the main to force the bow down. If you need to, back the jib.
To learn more advanced sailing courses and high performance sailing tips by Steve Colgate, visit sailtips.com or offshoresailing.com.
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Advanced Sailing Courses Offer High Performance Techniques
What do you do if you're out sailing and the wind is rapidly rising? Hopefully you have had some high-level sailing lessons which taught you how to sailreef. One definition of a reef is a barely submerged line of rocks or land. Sometimes, in roller reefing, a sail is rolled around a wire at its huff or lowered a few feet and rolled around the boom. The time to try to sailreef is not when the wind is rising but in a well designed sailing course. If you properly reef your mainsail, this high performance sailing maneuver will help you keep your vessel under control and possibly minimize any damage to your sails.
Furling the jib is often the first step to sailreefing on sailboats with furling systems. The sail area must still be reduced. Newer sailors might furl in the jib, start the engine and then reef. But that will leave you in the mercy of the waves. Before reefing:
*Check that the boom vang is eased.
*Make sure all involved know the sequence of steps and the communication commands to get there.
*Make sure the person on the lines knows which is the main sheet and which is the main halyard.
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Advanced Sailing Courses for the Avid Sailor
Offshore Sailing School Tip: One of the best ways to get a complete sailing education is to take Colgate's Offshore Accelerated Sail Training (COAST). You'll go from beginner to advanced in less than two years and save a bundle. You get five certifications in four courses by taking advanced sailing lessons from COAST. The cirriculum includes:
Basic Keelboat Certification
Basic Cruising Certification and Bareboat Cruising Certifications
Coastal Navigation Certification with Catamaran Live Aboard Navigation course
Coastal Passage Making Certification with the Live Aboard Coastal Passagemaking course
When you sign up for advanced sailing lessons with COAST, you'll also get discounts on your first Moorings charter cruise, up to $2,000 off a purchase of a brand new Hunter yacht, a one year subscription to SAIL Magazine, a free pair of official Offshore sailing gloves, $200 off your first year’s Offshore Sailing Club Membership, and free membership in the Offshore Cruising Club.
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Using the Wind for High Performance Sailing
When you are just beginning to learn sailing, it might seem like the wind is coming constant from one direction. But, as you begin to learn advanced sailing techniques through sailing courses designed for experienced sailors, you will realize the wind is always changing. It comes from one direction and as soon as you utilize your know-how to deal with it, it changes just as fast as it came. That is fine as those with advanced sailing instruction know how to deal with changing wind. It is actually one of the more challenging aspects of learning to sail. A shift in the wind is called a header, therefore a boat has been headed or has sailed into a header. Here are some tips for handling wind once you have basic sailing lessons behind you:
*If the wind shifts more toward the stern of the boat, you can point higher than you were previously pointing or sail more toward the original wind. This wind is called a lift. Most wind shifts are 10 degrees or less, but when you are taking a sailing course, you might learn about wind shifts through diagrams where they are exaggerated so you can better understand advanced sailing knowledge.
*If a large shift hits a boat on port tack, to respond and keep the sails full, the skipper has to fall off to the new heading. But, a lift is a helpful wind shift helping a boat head more directly toward the desired destination upwind.
*If you watch high performance sailing races, you'll soon find that these experts know how to manipulate their given circumstances. For example, a header for a boat on port tack is a lift for a boat on starboard. And since a lift helps you sail closer to your destination, a skipper will often change tacks when headed. Racers almost always tack when headed if they want to come in first.
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Advanced Sailing Courses Should Cover Anchoring in a Storm
If you have signed up for an advanced sailing class, you probably already know the in's and out's of anchoring a sailboat. But, learning to sail should cover how to do basic techniques when a challenging situation--such as a storm--is likely You may feel comfortable taking a cruising sailboat for a long trip but will you know how to anchor when inclement weather is predicted? Make sure your advanced sailing classes cover this type of situation, as it is likely to occur. Also, study the particular characteristics of weather in the area where you anchor. Storms effects will be different from city to city, and country to country.
If you need to anchor when there are storm warnings, put out a second anchor for safety reasons. Ensure that both your anchor lines are in the direction of the anticipated storm and at an angle of 30-45 degrees to the bow. It is also good to practice running the engine in reverse to dig the anchor in. If you have a dinghy on a cruising yacht, climb in and drop a second anchor, shackle the second anchor on and row it out. Do this when you arrive so you don't have to do it in the middle of the night when it's storming.
There are differing philosophies on how best to anchor in a variety of situations. That's why taking an advanced sailing course with instructors who have a great deal of on-water experience is better than just learning from books. These certified instructors have likely anchored in storms and bad weather and can teach you the tricks of the trade.
