ASA course vs. learning on own

[Uricanejack]

There are loads of people who learned to sail by reading books or sailing with friends or somebody they met down the club.
And loads more will.

Is a course required? No.

Is a sailing course worth your while and hard earned cash?

I’m not familiar with the specifics of ASA. I have heard it’s very similar to CYA which I have both completed and instructed.
Power Squadron course is also very good for basic nautical stuff like rules and chart work and can be done as night class.

It doesn’t really matter which basic sailing course you take or which organization certifies it.
There really is only so many ways to cover the basics. And the organization just set the curriculum.

Find a good well reputed sailing school which is convenient for you. Preferably in the area you would like to sail.
Or head for the sun, if you prefer.

There are many advantages of an organized course,
Practical demonstration and group learning obviously.
Possibly the main advantage of a course.
There is a planned and well thought out curriculum or agenda which starts with the very simple basics and covers all the steps you will need to figure out to effectively sail a boat from leaving the dock to returning.

You can take more advanced courses if you want or not.

Learning from books friends ect will often leave gaps.

Having your own small boat and sailing by yourself soon after taking a course will help you retain the knowledge you have gained and add experience. This will give you a good foundation to build your knowledge as your experience increases.

Even as an instructor, when I’m sailing with friends, I only show them what they need to know now for what we are doing now.
If it doesn’t come up, we just sail along.

The best advantage of a sailing course, it’s fun.

[requiem]

A decade is a fair amount of time. I recall one book in which the author pointed out how much things changed every 20 years over the last century, and in ways often completely unexpected. The four horsemen are still out riding, after all. A decade has a very good chance of something coming along to upset your plans, and even a 5-year plan is tempting the gods.

You should be able to learn sufficient to do a vacation charter over the course of a year if time permits, and certainly over two. That includes both classes and practice. I suggest classes as a way to front-load your knowledge and as a way to get a discount on the tuition of experience. It also has the benefit of an instructor who can point out when you've gotten something backwards.

I haven't done the ASA classes, but I have done the US Sailing ones. The curricula appear similar, and thus I'd suggest places that offer more time on the water. That is, a two weekend 101 class is probably better than a two day class, and finding ways to get on the water and practice what you've learnt between each class will be even more effective. If you take a class and don't get on the water for another 6 months, you may find very little knowledge was retained.

[Chris Cringle]

Learn on your own. You have ten years? Sail your C-15 on your local lake as much as you can. Sailing is not rocket science and after two years you will feel quite confident. Then, buy a 20 foot trailerable boat with a minimum of accommodation. Start doing weekend overnighters on bigger bodies of water. Anchor overnight. Cook on board. Deal with minor emergencies. Graduate to week long “cruises” on even bigger bodies water. By the time you are ready to start looking for that “Bahamas trip” boat, you will know what you want and you will be confident enough the begin cruising. The learning curve with still exist but it will be flatter. Fair winds.

[john745]

Thank you everyone for your kind advice. I think I will do a little of both! Great advice for sure!

[A CheeseHead]

Originally Posted by john745

I have some LIMITED sailing experience.

I've taken my own small 15' or smaller boats out on lakes 3-4 times on my own and I spent a day sailing with an experienced sailer in the San Francisco bay.
Limited experience. My confidence is perhaps greater than my experience.

I am considering the ASA courses vs. just going out and learning on my own with books and youtube and a week by myself on a rented boat.

Goal is 10 years from now... take the family sailing in the bahamas or cruising further.

I do have a small 15' coronado which I purchased last year and hope to take out when it is warmer.

What do you recommend? I love to learn on my own but my time is limited. Do you recommend the ASA courses? They are kinda expensive.

Your Coronado is a great base to start from. Between now & when it gets warmer, grab a basic book (something like 'sailing for dummies') and read it cover to cover with a dictionary handy until you have a grasp of what to do. Then go out and test your knowledge. If you have a friend who's done any sailing at all, have them come along.

Then track down a sailing club. If there's a college club that you can join, learn about sailing dinghies on your own, get your ass wet, capsize & recover, and then go racing with the club in their boats. Racing will teach you more and faster than anything else.

If there's a yacht club nearish by, try to volunteer as crew on their races once you think you have a reasonable grasp of what to do. Meanwhile, READ. Read everything you can get your hands on. Read about disasters at sea. Read about racing technique. Read about marlinespike seamanship. Read about cruising. Some magazines are OK (Sailing World, Cruising World) to read.

I'm 82. I learned to sail in a college club, learned to race little boats & big ones, and read tons. Never took a course, just put the miles on until family got in the way, then retired and put more miles on. You can do the same. Just read & get wet.

[LAGERTHA]

I am an ASA instructor, so my response naturally is go for the ASA 101 course. You will undoubtedly learn more in one weekend than any book can can give you. Books are fine, and they will provide a great reference or a decent base, but getting on a sailboat with 4 or 5 other prospective novice sailors and your learning curve is accelerated in the ASA 101. Generally, you will find that the Captain/Instructor will spend a few hours in the classroom and then spend the rest of the day on a boat translating some of the topics covered on board. The American Sailing Association has really fine tuned and perfected the course and the Instructional Course book is really outstanding. I myself never had a bad review or feedback on the program and is always full of great experiences and superlatives. As Captain Kirk has been quoted as saying: "You learn by doing". Good luck to you and enjoy the experience.

[markiobe]

Originally Posted by john745

I have some LIMITED sailing experience.

I've taken my own small 15' or smaller boats out on lakes 3-4 times on my own and I spent a day sailing with an experienced sailer in the San Francisco bay.
Limited experience. My confidence is perhaps greater than my experience.

I am considering the ASA courses vs. just going out and learning on my own with books and youtube and a week by myself on a rented boat.

Goal is 10 years from now... take the family sailing in the bahamas or cruising further.

I do have a small 15' coronado which I purchased last year and hope to take out when it is warmer.

What do you recommend? I love to learn on my own but my time is limited. Do you recommend the ASA courses? They are kinda expensive.

If you want to learn to sail, (as opposed to all the other things cruisers need such as navigation etc) the BEST way is to race in a centre/daggerboard dinghy that can capsize.

How - Find a good helm who wants a crew in a 2 person boat. You will learn so much more quickly than ANY other method, including instruction from ASA or whoever, about what makes boats behave in the ways that they do. Most sailing clubs will welcome you with open arms and help you find someone to sail with.

Why - The reason is pretty simple; dinghies react to every tiny movement of sheets, weight, trim, heel, vang, cunningham etc and it becomes incredibly obvious what's happening and why. In a large boat you don't feel anything in comparison, therefore the learning feedback is either incredibly slow or quite possibly none existent.

In addition, racing requires that you push hard and when you're on the edge you learn by trial and error really quickly. Also, by watching other boats, both faster and slower, you can see what works and what doesn't.

Once you've crewed for a while ask if you can helm a race with the experienced person as your crew and ask them to coach you.

You may never want to race your cruiser, but having learned by racing dinghies you'll be SO much better prepared to handle the boat than someone who hasn't. A well sailed boat is safer, puts less strain on the equipment and is faster.

When you can sail a dinghy around a course using heel and sail trim but with no rudder you'll be amazed at how easy sailing a cruiser is.

Also it's free and waaayyyy more fun than lessons!!

[Bgkahuna]

You can learn on your own should you choose to. Youtube is good. Books are good. And most of all, experience with someone who knows what they are doing is good. Having an official class doesn't make you a better sailor. However, many places prefer to see that you have had some classes before they entrust a boat with you. A certification tells others what you have done and what your knowledge is. The class certification says you understand the principles of the vessel.

[JBsurfin]

Originally Posted by john745

I have some LIMITED sailing experience.

I've taken my own small 15' or smaller boats out on lakes 3-4 times on my own and I spent a day sailing with an experienced sailer in the San Francisco bay.
Limited experience. My confidence is perhaps greater than my experience.

I am considering the ASA courses vs. just going out and learning on my own with books and youtube and a week by myself on a rented boat.

Goal is 10 years from now... take the family sailing in the bahamas or cruising further.

I do have a small 15' coronado which I purchased last year and hope to take out when it is warmer.

What do you recommend? I love to learn on my own but my time is limited. Do you recommend the ASA courses? They are kinda expensive.

Check with local charters, many do offer sailing lessons. I do here in NJ and get 3 or 4 people/couples a summer.

[lestersails]

I'm with Uricanejack and Mike O'R. There can be real benefits to a course and I found mine to be fun. They taught me stuff I would not likely come across. Or, they present it to me in a way that surprises me - my reaction is "huh - I never thought of it that way". And all the courses I took included on water training, which is where things from the classroom really "clicked" and were cemented in my mind*.
That being said, you are right that they are expensive. So I would say if you have the discretionary $ to spend and you tend to like learning from an instructor, then you should definitely do the course. If not, maybe not, at least not now.
Either way - I agree with others that being out on the water on your boat as much as possible will be great for you and getting some helm time on bigger boats will be key. While I agree with many that learning on smaller boats is the best because you really directly feel the effects of wind and rudder, there is an intimidation factor with bigger boats that you need to get past.



*My favorite was mast bending. In my independent reading and in the course books, it really just didn't sink in. But I took a racing course at the St. Thomas Yacht Club where we reviewed it in class and then went out on the water and the instructor bent the mast - holy moly was that impressive. I'll never forget it. I think cruisers aren't that much into bending masts - more of a racing thing, but it was a great example of something I just wouldn't have grasped without that course.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by lestersails

*My favorite was mast bending. In my independent reading and in the course books, it really just didn't sink in. But I took a racing course at the St. Thomas Yacht Club where we reviewed it in class and then went out on the water and the instructor bent the mast - holy moly was that impressive. I'll never forget it. I think cruisers aren't that much into bending masts - more of a racing thing, but it was a great example of something I just wouldn't have grasped without that course.

You would learn it by racing or you wouldn't do very well.

You just have to look around at the other boats and see the bend on their masts.

I've seen racers adjust mast pre-bend between races. My last racing boat had a carbon fiber mast and they are pretty easy to bend...

Also many racers have two sets or battens or adjust their battens depending on the wind.

Same with mast rake.

And tons of other stuff......

You can lose a race if you sheeting is off by inches.......or if you main is a bit old and it's blowing hard and you can't point with the rest of the boats

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by thomm225

You would learn it by racing or you wouldn't do very well.

You just have to look around at the other boats and see the bend on their masts.

I've seen racers adjust mast pre-bend between races. My last racing boat had a carbon fiber mast and they are pretty easy to bend...

Also many racers have two sets or battens or adjust their battens depending on the wind.

Same with mast rake.

And tons of other stuff......

You can lose a race if you sheeting is off by inches.......or if you main is a bit old and it's blowing hard and you can't point with the rest of the boats

Thanks for the post, but kind of missing my point. My point was that learning is a really individual thing. All of us learn in different ways. The most important thing (and what I hope I communicated) is that our OP needs to think about how he learns and decide what mix of book learning, on water on your own experience, learn from an experienced person on the water, a course, racing, lots of possibilities. No one can tell anyone how they will learn best - that person has to figure that out for themselves.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by lestersails

Thanks for the post, but kind of missing my point. My point was that learning is a really individual thing. All of us learn in different ways. The most important thing (and what I hope I communicated) is that our OP needs to think about how he learns and decide what mix of book learning, on water on your own experience, learn from an experienced person on the water, a course, racing, lots of possibilities. No one can tell anyone how they will learn best - that person has to figure that out for themselves.

Point was racing can get you there without any formal training.......

I learned to get the boat from the ramp across the lake and back.

Then started racing beach cats.......then continued that for 15 years on 4 different boats then bought my first monohull.

I did have 6-7 power boats though and 8-10 years boating experience on the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean before I started sailing though.

Books, racing, and the attached chart is all I used to learn with, but you are right, everyone learns in a different way

[wholybee]

The problem with learning any way other than a class, is that you risk missing some fundamentals. You can buy a book, get on a boat, and learn to sail. You can join a race team and learn to sail. Or walk the docks and meet people for day sails.

It is unlikely that with any of those methods would you practice man over-board drills. You certainly could, but it's unlikely. And you would not have the experience of an instructor watching you and giving you pointers or correcting your mistakes.

It is unlikely that that these methods would teach colregs. Maybe the book might cover them, but that is very different from an instructor asking you 50 times throughout a day "that vessel there, who is stand on and who is give way, and tell me why."

You might actually learn to sail better from a book, or from an experienced sailor, or racing, or whatever. But I recommend that you start with a class and get a few fundamentals first.

After completing ASA104 it's very much your choice how to proceed. But there is value in the first 2 classes that is very hard to get outside of a formal class.

[pbmaise]

I am a firm believer that 90% of cruising knowledge is taught by experiencing repairing another vessel that needs repairs. Try and find an old boat at a marina owned by someone who is tryin got fix it up. You would especially be looking for someone who has repaired boats before.