Taking Classes or learning from a local sailor

[nolatom]

Take the 101 course for the reasons above, and also because there's a benefit in watching what your fellow students do right and wrong, you learn from it all.

Before, after, and inbetween, sail with anyone on anything (that's safe), you learn more by doing than reading, though you need to read.

Then take a Power Squadron or Coast Guard Auxiliary course. These are still free I think, and they'll cover the chart work and navigation that you don't really get in the 101 classes (you do in the Basic cruising classes, but they cost).

I started sailing at around age 10, took Power Squadrons at 14 (got no certificate since you had to be 16, but they let me sit in anyway). This back in the 60's, when there weren't really any sailing schools or certificates as now, just yacht club junior programs, local sailing clubs, or the school of hard knocks.