We sailed with Blue Water sailing school in Florida for our beginning ASA courses. I think we got two courses completed in the week, since I and my wife had experience. I''d never done so many man over board drills and
jibs in my life. But the other two were somewhat new to sailing and those were the things they wanted to learn. In stead of sailing down the ICW farther we the group voted to stay at Monkey Point an extra night. The next day we did man overboard drills, jibed, and hoved to. One late afternoon on the way back we got into an anchorage had some docking drills and then proceeded to learn to motor in reverse. The captain had us doing circles in reverse through out the anchorage, in and around all those who were anchored. Must have looked pretty funny but great practice.
We had the opportunity to meet a couple of other captains during our trip since we sailed with two other groups for part of the way. I would say all were experienced and each group had a great time. Our captain was contract only when they got very busy. The other two we met I believe were hired for the entire winter. Boats were older but in good shape.
I used the Maryland School of Sailing and Seamanship for my advanced ASA course. Tom Tursi runs a great school, great courses, very experienced captains, and very good reviews from everyone I''ve spoken with who have used them. I did the DELVARMA trip which gave us some ocean experence. For a great lakes sailor it was my first, except from Fort Lauderdale to Miami durring the Blue water course. I will never forget the great time we had ocean sailing at night. It was so peacefull and beautiful. Goes down as one of my most memorable sails. They have a Great web site mdschool.com . You can read sailing logs of trips during the year written by the captains. Tom uses only Island Packets. I plan on using them again for my offshore ASA. Just have to find someone in Michigan who teaches Celestial Navigation. I would recomend them highly.
Good Luck
John_/)_/)_/)
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