[akallabeth]

First post - please excuse the newbieness

My wife and I have always wanted to learn to sail, and have planned a busy summer of courses, starting with an intro to sailing, followed by a basic keelboat, cruising, bareboat, and finally catamaran courses (ASA certifications in 101,103, 104, and 114).

Frankly, I don't know realistically what this means our skill level would be afterward, and I don't necessarily trust the course descriptions to be completely up front.

We always vacation in Greece for 2-3 weeks each summer (she's Greek). A dream would be to charter a small catamaran and try some short island hopping (say the Northern Sporades). However, after the outline above, I have no idea if we would be ready for that, or whether we need x-number of years of regular sailing under our belts first, etc.

I can see how it could be the latter, so I don't mean any offense to experienced sailors. I'm just fairly ignorant here.

For us the prices for sailing are a bit of a shocker, and we are still trying to figure out how to find a way to sail regularly and afford it. So bareboat prices are much more attractive. We also thought to try and convince an acquaintance who has a good bit a sailing experience to accompany us (that also helps with the horrific prices in charting w.r.t. our budget - we were thinking catamarans). But this is likely somewhat of a long shot.

Thanks for any advice.