Cost: $1495 per student.
Duration and Availability: 7 days, 6 nights: Starting on Saturday morning and concludes on the following Friday afternoon. The 100 course is offered all year long.
Course description: The 100 course is specifically designed for those that have no experience at all, up to novice sailors. The course covers basic sailing techniques, nomenclature, sail handling, basic chart reading and safety afloat. This is taught in a live-aboard environment on forty foot and larger vessels. This course is designed as an introduction to cruising and the joys of living aboard a vessel.
While a formal school is super experience, it is still should only be a segment in your learning process. We suggest that our students augment this course with practical experience at every possible opportunity. Sailing clubs, going on daysails with friends, renting a small vessel on protected waters, purchasing a daysailer, putting your name on the bulletin board of a local yacht club as crew are all excellent ways of gaining valuable sailing experience.
Ocean Masters Sailing Academy utilizes Bob Bond's Handbook of Sailing as a textbook. This is a good general sailing handbook that covers an amazing amount of material; from launching a trailerable daysailer to heavy weather techniques for the offshore sailor; marine weather and how to read a weather map, anchoring, cartography and navigational charts, aids to navigation and a hundred other subjects are all discussed in detail in the Handbook of Sailing. We suggest to all our students that they get a chance to review Bond's. It is a popular book that can be found in most larger book stores and libraries. There are a number of other good titles, Chapman’s Piloting, Dutton’s, Royce Sailing Illustrated and a dozen others that are great reference books. Every sailor should have at least a couple of these on their bookshelf. If you would like a copy of Bonds and are not able to find one we can send you a copy. The cost is $25 plus $3 shipping. Ocean Masters Sailing Academy provides copies of The Handbook of Sailing on the vessel for use by the students while taking the course.
As a first time potential sailing school student we recognize that picking one, out of the dozens of schools that are available can be daunting. We would like to take a minute to tell you what sets Ocean Masters Sailing Academy apart from all the rest. First, we are a school and only a school. While many schools are afterthoughts to charter companies, teaching is our focus and our passion; it is all we do. All of our vessels are fully equipped cruising boats with the equipment one would expect on a cruising vessel: GPS, autopilot, refrigeration, dinghy with outboard, some vessels even have sophisticated electronic chart-pak systems and radar. Our vessels are not stripped out bareboat charter boats.
All of our vessels are forty foot and larger and we normally place only two to four students per vessel. We also attempt to give every student or couple their own private cabin. We recognize that privacy and a good nights sleep is conducive to a better overall learning experience. Currently 28% of all our bookings are repeat customers.
We are a Live-aboard, Learn-aboard school, this has a number of advantages: Our price per student of $1,495 per student is all inclusive; provisions, fuel, instructor, dockage, port fees, linens, etc. are all included in the base price. Cost for a non-live-aboard course can be very open ended, with lodging, evening entertainment and restaurants. The cost of a week long course with accommodations can easily double the total cost of a week of sailing.
A live-aboard environment has the advantage of total immersion. From first light, till the time your head hits the pillow you are engaged in the hands-on experience of sailing a cruising sailboat. Each day you arise to the challenge of planning the day, plotting your course and making a successful passage to that evening's destination.
Another way that Ocean Masters Sailing Academy is different, than most other schools, is that we use our course designators as an effort on our part to ascertain your experience and ability level. The amount or level of the material to be covered in a course is dictated by the abilities of the students, not by a predefined course designation. Our instructors attempt to challenge every student and then certify each individually.
Our task is to put together two to four students on each vessel that have approximately the same level of experience, abilities and desires. We find that if we are successful at getting the right mix, a synergy develops and the final result is that the students come away from the class with maximum benefit.
We like to think that Ocean Masters Sailing Academy is unique among sailing schools in our level of dedication to our students. All of our instructors are seasoned Masters with USCG Licenses and our instructors average more than seventeen years experience each. During the past year we have instituted a policy of providing transportation for our students to and from the airport. We have developed relationships with some of the better lodging establishments in the Fort Lauderdale area and have negotiated corporate discounts, which pass along to our students. We provide snorkeling gear on the vessel at no extra charge. All of this is a continuing effort on our part to do all we can for our students.