While many Barefoot Offshore Sailing School participants come with some sailing experience, others arrive with little or no experience as crew or helmperson on a sailboat.  We welcome people with any experience level.  Whatever experience and skills you arrive with, you are guaranteed to leave with more!

Many guests who sign up for our Basic or Catamaran Cruise and Learn courses ask how far they can progress?  Here are some perspectives on that question.

Your sailing journey

I think of sailing knowledge and skills as a continuum or journey.  As an Offshore instructor, I have the highest cruising instructor qualifications that ASA and Sail Canada offer, but I’m still on the sailing learning journey, continuing to upgrade my knowledge and skills.

If you are a novice sailor, with little or no previous experience, you are close to the beginning of that journey.

Sailing journey milestones

The first key milestone along your journey is when you have acquired the knowledge, skills and experience to be able to safely skipper a boat for a day-sail with precious cargo: family and friends on board.  (This is the equivalent of Sail Canada Basic, or ASA 101 and for some, ASA 103).  As skipper, you have total responsibility for the safety and well-being of everyone on board.  Based on my instructing experience to date, both in Canada and here in St. Vincent, around 2/3s of people who are novice sailors can achieve SC Basic Cruising or ASA 101 in a week, and some can progress to ASA 103. However, that also means that 1/3 of novice sailors need a bit more time and experience to reach these levels.

The next key milestone along your journey is when you have acquired the knowledge, skills and experience to be able to safely skipper or charter a boat for a multi-day cruise with precious cargo: family and friends on board. (This is the equivalent of Sail Canada Intermediate, or ASA 104). As a skipper in this context,  in addition to total responsibility for the safety and well-being of everyone, you have total responsibility for a yacht worth several hundred thousand dollars. Based on my instructing experience to date, lots of course participants who have previous sailing experience can get there in a week, but in all the courses I have taught, only 1 or 2 novice sailors have managed to make that much progress in a week. There is just too much to learn for most novices to achieve that in a few days.

The levels beyond that, ASA 106 or Sail Canada Advanced, require much greater knowledge, skills and experience.  There is no possibility for a novice to get to those levels in a week. FYI, I progressed quickly to SC Advanced, but I already had 12,000 miles of cruising in my resume by then.  You don’t need that much experience to be successful at progressing to Advanced, but you definitely need to have skippered a number of cruises and have several hundred miles of experience as skipper before it is feasible to pass an Advanced course.

As a novice sailor, where should I start?

For novice sailor, what I recommend is that you join one of our Cruise and Learn courses focusing on ASA 101-104, or Sail Canada Basic and Intermediate.  (The Sail Canada option is available if the instructor on board has SC qualifications in addition to ASA qualifications.)  As a novice sailor, your realistic expectation in that first week would be to be certified for ASA 101 and possibly 103, or Sail Canada Basic, and make some progress toward 104 or Sail Canada Intermediate certification on a subsequent visit.  (You could also consider learning on a catamaran.  Most instructors agree that there are advantages to starting out on a monohull, but we have also taught many novices to sail on a catamaran first.)

In a future visit, you can focus on completing 104 / SC Intermediate, and consider adding ASA 114 or the Sail Canada Catamaran endorsement if you are looking to become proficient at sailing a catamaran.  At the end of that second week of instruction, you could potentially have built the knowledge and skills you need to charter a boat for future adventures.

Onward!

Good luck with your journey.  I’m working on the next stage of my own sailing journey, and continue to take great satisfaction on helping others progress on theirs.

Rob McLean is an ASA and Sail Canada Advanced and Offshore Instructor, a Sail Canada Senior Instructor Evaluator, an ASA Master Instructor, and Barefoot Offshore Sailing School Lead Instructor and Coordinator

Barefoot Offshore Sailing School offers a “mentored charter”.  This helps graduates of our sailing courses make the transition to sole responsibility as skipper of a chartered boat.

What is a mentored charter?

In a mentored charter, the charter skipper agrees to shadow one of our sailing course boats during their initial charter.  The BOSS Instructor on the sailing course checks in daily with the charter skipper, and is available as needed to provide advice and feedback.  There is a small incremental fee to cover the costs of mentorship.

Who is eligible for a mentored charter?

Mentored charters are available to students who have successfully completed ASA 104 or Sail Canada Intermediate.  For a mentored charter on a catamaran, sudents should have also completed ASA 114 or the Sail Canada Catamaran Endorsement.

What are the benefits of a mentored charter?

Skippers who have participated in mentored charters tell us that the availability of the Instructor mentor  substantially reduced the apprehension they otherwise felt at the thought of being in sole charge of a charter vessel for the first time.

On completion of a mentored charter and a recommendation from the mentoring Instructor, the charter skipper is usually eligible to book a future charter with Barefoot Yacht Charters (subject to the proficiency levels applicable to specific charter vessels).

A key benefit of a mentored charter is that it helps build a skipper’s sailing resume.  This enhances your eligibility to book future charters with Barefoot or other charter operators around the world.

When can I book a mentored charter?

In many cases, guests book a mentored charter immediately after their BOSS sailing course.  This helps cement the progress they made in the course.  Of course, you can also book a mentored charter on your next visit to Barefoot and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

How do I book a mentored charter?

Contact our booking team, who can explore the details with you.

Barefoot Offshore Sailing School welcomes couples to join our courses.  For couples who plan to cruise together, it is important that both partners are confident sailing the boat.

I frequently invite sailing couples to consider the question:  which partner is more likely to fall off the boat? Contrary to what some people think initially, the answer is, the most experienced sailor is more likely to fall overboard, because if something needs to be fixed on the boat, that person will be likely to expose him or herself to higher risks to try to fix the problem.  (I’m been personally guilty of that.) So couples sailing together need to ensure that even the less-experienced sailor has sufficient skill to be able to recover the partner that has fallen overboard.  You only have to put yourself mentally into that situation to realize how important this is.

We are often asked about bringing a partner along on a course. There are two situations.

The first is where one of the partners wants to participate in the instruction process, but is not interested in passing the exams or being certified. This is no problem: you can acquire the important knowledge and skills without writing the exams or being formally evaluated.

The second situation is where a student asks to bring a partner along as a guest who doesn’t plan to participate in the instruction process.

Speaking as an instructor, this is not an ideal situation, either for the couple or the other students in the course. There is a significant risk that having someone on board who isn’t participating will be a distraction for everyone. Watching students practice manoeuvres without being part of the process will inevitably be boring for the non-participant.  A camaraderie always builds when a crew is working together on a boat: the non-participant will find it increasingly hard to fit in.

There can be exceptions to the general discouragement of non-participants: I led a school once where one of the participants informed me in advance that she had significant health issues that would prevent her from participating fully, but that this was an important opportunity for she and her partner to sail together.  In this circumstance, everyone on the boat completely understood the situation and was fine with it.

A better option in case a student wishes to bring along non-participating friends and family is a Barefoot Offshore Sailing School “private course”: click here for details.

Rob McLean is an ASA and Sail Canada Advanced and Offshore Instructor, an ASA and Sail Canada Instructor Evaluator, and Barefoot Offshore Sailing School Lead Instructor and Coordinator