There is a desperate need for sailors and other boaters to learn how to navigate. Some courses that I see offered are simply academic, extremely dry, and of not much practical use. On the other hand, using electronic navigation without understanding the fundamentals of navigation is destined to failures of many kinds. As an ASA Instructor I have been teaching…
In our ongoing commitment to help our students maintain their sailing skills we are introducing a new program we call Outbound Sailing Community. You may know of our Monthly and Bareboat Memberships, Pico rentals, our Refresher courses, Carib trips, and other skill maintenance programs we offer. This is a bit different. It also brings a more social aspect to your…
A big part of what we do in our Caribbean Adventure Learning course is Navigation. Some of the skills students learn are how to navigate using dead reckoning, how to plot a position by taking bearings on two objects, and doing a running fix. We check our work using the GPS to see how close we got. It’s really satisfying…
The hard part about anchoring is planning for the unknowns and uncertainties, such as how another boat is anchored, how much is the wind direction/speed going to shift during the night, should I set an anchor watch. The easy part is actually dropping the anchor, right? Well, not always. Let me illustrate by sharing an anchoring incident on one of…
The fundamental objective of navigation is to get from A to B without hitting the ground. To do this, there are several things that are essential to achieving this objective.– a chart with soundings and a coordinate system– a way to plot positions and directions on the chart– the ability to determine your current position– the ability to determine the…
There is a desperate need for sailors and other boaters to learn how to navigate. Some courses that I see offered are simply academic, extremely dry, and of not much practical use. On the other hand, using electronic navigation without understanding the fundamentals of navigation is destined to failures of many kinds.
As an ASA Instructor I have been teaching ASA105 – Coastal Navigation and Piloting – for many years. It is a wonderful course for learning the concepts, the principles, and the methods of classical navigation. We used paper charts, parallel rules, dividers, etc and it was a laborious, yet satisfying, enterprise. But that is not how people navigate today. At the other end of the spectrum is the modern mind which immediately says “there’s an app for that”. That is absolutely true and unfortunately, they buy one of the many available apps, install it on their phone, and off they go “navigating”, much to their peril.
I developed my Practical Navigation course to address this problem: On the one hand you have extremely important information in classical navigation that is very difficult to put into practice. On the other hand, today it is frighteningly simple – get a phone, a nav app, and a captain’s hat, and presto chango, you’re a navigator. There is a huge gap here, and I’m afraid many boaters will fall into it.
In this course we will look at practical things that we can do as sailors to take advantage of the electronics available to us, but not to get lulled into a false sense of security. We will learn the basics of classical navigation so we can understand and utilize the benefits of our electronic charts and instruments, without losing sight of their limitations.
In our ongoing commitment to help our students maintain their sailing skills we are introducing a new program we call Outbound Sailing Community.
You may know of our Monthly and Bareboat Memberships, Pico rentals, our Refresher courses, Carib trips, and other skill maintenance programs we offer. This is a bit different. It also brings a more social aspect to your sailing and will result in more opportunities for you to go sailing with other students.
The primary purpose of this Community is to help our students get out on the water so you can practice and improve your sailing skills. But it will also introduce you to other sailors with similar interests and objectives, it will build sailing relationships, and you will have more opportunities to get on a sailboat. Several of our Members, Instructors, and other sailors who have boats at Sail & Ski Marina have expressed an interest in skippering these events and expanding their sailing networks, so you might find some more opportunities there. It’s amazing how much you can learn just by hanging out with other sailors.
Starting out, we will be offering Community Sailing 2 to 3 times per month with the typical sailing time being about 2½ to 3 hours. The cost is $25 per person. We will be using Boomerang, which gives us plenty of room for the skipper and 5 students. Each person will get time at the helm and crew time, and the skipper will accommodate requests for training in particular areas of sailing or seamanship.
ASA strongly suggests that 101 students get 24 hours on the water sailing practice before taking 103, and that 103 students get 80 hours sailing before taking 104. This is very difficult to achieve, but we are committed to helping our students get as much practice as possible before the next class.
The program is open to all of our students who have taken 101 with us and are currently registered for, or have already completed, 103.
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It’s just you and your guests enjoying a spectacular cruise on a beautiful 31 foot Catalina sailboat. Daytime, or amazing sunset sailing.
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We’ve been super busy with our Carib trips, despite covid. In Jan 2021 we went to the Bahamas. In Jun we did two incredible back to back trips to the US Virgin Islands, and in October we were back again spending lots of time in the pristine anchorages of St John. Our May 2022 trip took us to the BVI which was our 8th time down there. As usual, it was perfect. Not a surprise!
On the Bahamas adventure, we discovered that one of our crew, David Buono, is an amazing photographer/videographer. Check out this absolutely incredible video!
