Sailing Schools

[Don Guillette]

Mates: About 12 or so years ago I got sick of driving high speed jet boats and decided to get back into sailing. Actually, I got sick of my sons bringing the boat back in pieces!! When I bought a sail boat they wanted no part of it because it was too slow. That was OK with me.My first sail boat was a Macgregor 22 at Lake Havasu, AZ. The first thing that happened was I learned I did not know how to sail the boat. Nothing about sail trim came back to me. The next thing I did when I returned to So Ca was locate a sailing school. Many of the schools I talked to told me that with less than 4 hours of instructions I could take a 30' boat to Catalina Island - after listening to that pitch I felt that would be about the same time it would take me to train pigs to fly from my you know what - it just was not going to happen in that short space of time.Anyway, I located a school in Newport Beach and I took every lesson they offered from beginner to advanced. Advanced involved 10 hours of night sailing in Dec. Believe it or not it is cold out here in Dec. After the advance lessons, with all the drills in the dark, I wondered why anyone would want to go out in a boat in the first place. I got very good at a lot of sailing school stuff but not the one thing I really wanted to learn - how to actually sail the boat. I had no idea what was happening to the sails when the wind hit them. The sail trim controls confused me and the explanations I recieved from the instructors made no sense - at least to me. I even had to put a small "S" and "P" on the boom that only I could see so I could tell the instructor what tack we were on. No one, absolutly no one, was as bad at sail trim than I was.At the end of the school there was a check out certification proceedure. There were 3 instructors, 2 of which would have passed me but I picked the toughest instructor because even though I knew what I knew I needed his evaluation. The dock routine - backing, flaking sail etc - went perfect. When we went on the water, it only took him 10 minutes to tell me I had no idea what I was doing. I then hired him for private lessons and finally sail trim started to make some sense but I had a long way to go to get to the sail trim point I'm at now.My goal with my book "The sail Trim Users Guide" and my "Sail Trim Chart" is that I do not want new sailors to go through what I went through in order to learn how to sail a boat. There are a couple of schools that I think are top grade - Steve Colgate is one. Another is the J school. At sail boat shows I attend with Garhauer Marine, I spent a lot of time talking to students who have attended sailing schools. I also go out of my way to talk to the instructors. For the most part, both groups think I'm just some vendor selling marine hardware and they give me the inside skinny of what is happening in their organizations. Sadly, the name of the game is to get a person out of the school and chartering boats regardless of their skill level. I think that is criminal.Would anyone out there care to share their sailing school experince? The question you have to ask yourself is after the school could you go to your boat and set every sail trim control for your main and jib for every wind condition and point of sail? If you could then you got your moneys worth from the school. I did not get my monies worth.

 

[Karl]

Karl

Sounds as if YOU may be the problem and not the sailing schools in question. Experience will be your best teacher, get out in your boat and play with your sails and see what happens when you move the sails in and out. Tighter trim when your sailing towards the wind source and looser when you sail away from the wind source. If you can't get it after a few times motor back home, sell the boat, and try another hobby.

 

[Don Guillette]

Karl: Good advise because that is exactly what I did and eventually I got pretty good at sail trim. In fact, I got so good at it, I developed a "Sail Trim Chart" and even wrote a book on the subject called "The sail Trim Users Guide". Actually, getting out on the boat and just experimenting is really not the best advise. It would be similiar to giving a mate a golf club or baseball bat and telling him to go hit some balls. You need a solid basis of infomation to build on or you end up chasing yourself plus you develop bad habits. That goes for any sport - the basics are everything. Self taught people rarely progress past the very low intermediate level. Sail trim is very easy to learn when it is presented in a simple and logical way. Unfortuantely, most sailings schools are just in a rush to get you into charter because that is where the money is. One purpose to my message was to show that if I can learn sail trim and get to the level I'm presently at, then anyone can learn.

 

[Calif. Ted]

I knew how to sail before I took a class,

always had small boats and learned "on the water" as a kid from others. I didn't really know what gaps existed in my knowledge & wanted to start cruising as opposed to daysailing. My wife also had a sabot and sailed with her father. We took a weeklong cruise & learn in the San Juans that was the last trip of the season in September. This school stressed having max of 4 to 1 student teacher ratio as opposed to 6 to 1 many schools use. Turned out the other 2 spots were not filled so it was just us & the instructor on 45' boat and we were able to concentrate on the areas we really needed. Stuff like anchoring, trip planning, piloting, navigating, how to work together as a couple in these areas, and the stuff you don't learn just going out for the day.The tests for certification are easy really and we actually did them all the first day. I agree with you that it would not be able to go from zero to a proficient sailor in a week, just not enough time to cram it all in. I'll bet 99% of graduates could hit Catalina but that's like hitting fish in a barrel.To get the most from one of these classes start with a good school like those you recommend, read all the texts before you go, and try to get a good student teacher ratio. Haven't taken the offshore passage course but those that interest me are across the Pacific or long offshore on West Coast. I've seen some schools advertise that they make the night passage really easy like Catalina, seems the wrong way to do it to me. Gotta stretch yourself to learn, expand your comfort level. Night sailing in warm weather is one of life's great pleasures, and with a clear sky not bad in the winter either.

 

[Dick Westwood]

Few schools teach 'advanced sail trim'

My initial sailboat training was Basic Keelboat with Steve Colgate's Offshore Sailing School (the Stamford CT branch, now closed). At the end of it, I could sail - up to a point. That is, I knew how to handle the halyards, sheets and tiller: in fact, Offshore did a really good job training us in these controls. However. While I knew the names of the other controls - cunningham, vang, outhaul and traveller - I didn't have a clue about when, how or why to use them. These topics weren't covered. This seems typical of sailing schools. What's more, I've searched for courses on these more 'advanced' controls, and very few places offer them (locally: New York Sailing School does). I suspect the waters are full of sailors - like me - who have no idea of how really to trim a sail. So I think, Don, that your book and charts fill a real and important need.Dick

 

[Don Guillette]

Dick: Your right about the lacking of advanced sail trim aspects at sailing schools. How I know that to be true is I go out of my way to talk to sailing instructors, school graduates, sailing school owners. I have approached just about every sailing school from Ventura to San Diego regarding adding a sail trim seminar to their program. Where they all agree it should placed is probably at the end of the beginner program for the very reason you stated - at that point you knew the basics and the names of the other controls. Only one sailing school agreed to try my program and it was one of the bigger ones with 6 locations from Ventura to San Diego. The first seminar included their instuctors, school managers and some of their top students. I purposely included the instructors because if I could not sell them on the idea it never would have gotten off the ground. They all loved the program and I have the testimonials to prove it. I did one or two more seminars for their students and then the program died. Part of the problem was I did realize that their satelite offices are franchises and while the parent company was in favor of the program they could not force the franchise owners to do anything. The bottom line is that the money is in charter and the idea is to get the students chartering as fast as they can. The irony is that the sail trim seminar is a money maker for the school also. people who know how to sail the boats also cause less wear and tear.A friend of mine recently graduated from a local sailing school and on his first charter he asked me to go along with him just to bolster his confidence. Actually, his wife asked me. We sailed out of Newport Beach and turned right to sail up to marker bouy, which marked the extent of the area he could go. We were on port tack and I mentioned to him way before the mark that he should be thinking about and prepare to round the mark. He became very quite and I sensed somthing was wrong but did not say anything. Finally, I asked him how he was doing. He said I need help - which way do I turn the boat to go around the mark?After that he finally opened up (it is hard for guys to admit what they don't know and also very dangerous) and admited to me he didn't know his ass from his elbow as to how to sail the boat. I already knew that after the first 10 minutes on the water and so did his wife. We spent the next 2 hours with him and his wife working every sail trim control for the main and jib on every point of sail. I could see their confidence building and soon they were at a level where they should have been for the hard earned money they spent for lessons. They actually had fun sailing back to Newport because they knew what they were doing and were in control of the boat instead of it controlling them.Sail trim is so easy when it is presented in a logical and simple manner. Lots of guys may be good sailors but you have to be a good communicator to get material across to a student.