Any Experiences with Barcelona Sailing School or Blue Oyster Sailing School?

[monkeymayi]

Howdy-

I am thinking about taking some courses here. However, there were some pretty negative reviews posted about 4 years ago. It appears the school is run by Susie Capel.

Does anyone have any recent tales to tell from this (or any other Costa Brava) school?

Thanks!

Larry

[Gary CH]

Hi, we are a family of 3 and we also made the mistake of booking with blue oyster sailing in Barcelona. We booked with Susie 46ft yacht. Susie was extremely aggressive with us and after we made our travel arrangements to Barcelona she suddenly cancelled our booking because she was offered more by someone else for the same yacht leaving us with plane tickets but no boat. She then tried to give us another smaller boat but for a much higher price. My daughter (12 years old) was heart broken as we had to cancel the whole sailing week. When we "tanked" her for her help Susie replied that she was never planning to help us anyway. Bottom line we were treated horribly by an aggressive women. Cannot imagine being a whole week with Susie on the same boat.

[FlippedPip]

Hi there,

Check out Barcelona Watersports.

I've done all my courses with them the past year. From zero to day skipper, and VHF cert.

All the instructors have been great fun, very knowledgeable and I'm happy to be doing future courses with them.

They run from Barcelona.

Drop Faith an email spain@lagoonwatersports.co.uk and let her know Phil passed the info to you.

Let us know how you get on.

[gaucho]

Last year I was in the same "boat" as you. I researched quite a bit and ended up hopping on a plane to the Canaries (from Barcelona). It was inexpensive and I ended up going for a 1 week Coastal Skipper RYA course with Canary Sail. I had a blast. The class was excellent. We did daily 30 knot wind passages from La Gomera to the bigger island. Beautiful stuff. Very good learning. Highly recommend Canary Sail.

Jim is a great guy.

[hollandnigel]

Do not waste your time!!!
My course was due to start tomorrow, I have been in contact with them continuously, but they fail to acknowledge emails, or messages, or answer the phone.
Guess what... they just cancelled my course!!!
My girlfriend and friends did their course in 2014, after the course ended they sent their photos for the licenses, they were 'never received', they said they would send the license for her to put her own photos in, they were never received,
In 2015 I contacted them to do a course, they replied for a while, then went quiet.
This year I contacted them again (I should have learnt by now) they replied, then stopped....
Finally they contacted my girlfriend and arranged to meet in L'Escala so she could finally get her license, I went with them and met Mark, he came across as a nice chap, and we tried to arrange a course again.
After lots more ignored emails we finally found a date....
then the referendum happened and 2 non-Brits dropped out So i had to work hard to find two replacements and get the course costs quickly, which I did, and all the time contacting them (but no response)

Avoid Avoid Avoid

[Marcs2021]

2021: still Blue Oyster is as bad as always. This lady Susie is a big talker via email but profoundly refuses to speak to anyone on the phone prior to payment of around GBP 2000.
we tried to book sailing courses but she was extremely unprofessional. Promised the world via email but never actually responded to a request to have a conversation about the course. We were flying into Barcelona specifically for that sailing course, so of course we want to speak to the sailing school before we commit to shelling out GBP 2000 per head plus flight costs. Susie was no having any of it. Despite several friendly requests to speak with her, she just pointed to the sign up paper work seeking prepayment without any conversation.
I suspect she does not want to commit to anything on the phone and she continues to cancel on people at short notice, so she never wants to speak on the phone getting caught with lies.
Luckily we found another sailing school who were super reasonable:
barcelonawatersports.es
Their boss, Sebastian was quite willing to have a chat on the phone prior to the booking, explaining all the practical issues of the course. My advice, stay away from Blue Oyster as far as you can.

Update: October 2021 -> a friend of mine had the same experience with Susie. She is very keen via email and wants you to make booking and prepayment, but the second you ask for a quick phone conversation, she starts ghosting you...Just unprofessional!

[hollandnigel]

I also went with Barcelona Watersports!!

They were excellent, highly recommended,

Wish I had found them before I went through all that trouble with Blue Oyster