Questions
Five answers, including one we are deliberately not finishing yet.
- Do I need my own boat?
- No, and most students never buy one. Every course except private instruction runs on our boats, with sails, safety gear, and fuel included. If you do own a boat, private instruction on your own deck is usually a better use of your money than a course on ours.
- What happens if the weather is bad on my course day?
- It depends what kind of bad. Rain and twenty knots are a normal teaching day and we go. Lightning within eight miles puts us ashore immediately. A small craft advisory or fog moves your date at no cost. The full threshold table is on the on-the-water page, because 'weather permitting' is not an answer anybody can plan around.
- How many students are on a boat?
- Four at the most, three on the clinics, and eight for navigation ashore, which is at a table rather than on a boat. Four is the number where everyone gets the helm several times in a day. It is the reason our courses cost what they cost.
- Do I get a certification card at the end?
- Courses are structured around a recognised syllabus and there is a certification pathway. We are deliberately not naming the body or reproducing its wording on this page until our certifying organisation has approved the text — see the note below. Ask when you enrol and you will get the exact, current answer.
- Is there an age minimum?
- Sixteen for the keelboat courses, and eleven to sixteen for the junior summer sessions, which are in dinghies off the beach rather than keelboats off the dock. Under-eighteens need a parent's signature on the enrolment and a parent reachable by phone during the session.
The certification answer above is intentionally incomplete. The exact wording has to come from the certifying organisation, and we would rather leave a gap here than print something they have not approved.