Currently my wife and I have a 26' sailboat that we keep at a local lake. We race once a week and go cruising for few days here and there. Our main goal though is to upgrade to a much larger sailboat and spend half the year sailing the globe and the other half at home. That's the plan anyway.

There are 3 steps that we need in order to be prepared and safe out there on the big seas. The first is a basic knowledge of navigation. Now most of you may say, Don't you have a GPS or Navionics that does all the work? Yes, most boats will have all this and yes it is pretty useful, but what happens when your power fails or something breaks on you while out island hopping. This is where navigation is super helpful.

Step 1 - We signed up for a self administered basic coastal navigation course. They send you the textbook and you learn at your own pace. Once you have a grasp of the information then you dig into the workbook. You go over tons of scenarios from compass variation, buoy markers, tides and plotting bearings and courses on charts. It is quite in-depth for beginner nav. I would say though that an instructor lead course would be helpful to focus on the information as there is so much detail that it's tough to retain the knowledge. At the end there is a self administered exam of only 3 + hours and then you submit it all for marking. That being said it is a great course and would recommend it to anyone sending time on the water in any fashion.

PS. We passed!

Step 2 - Basic Coastal Cruising. You can do this through a liveaboard course where you get hands on experience on the basic rigging, controls, rules of the road and how to operate a boat. Since we have been sailing our own boat and not a stranger to these items we decided to forgo the course and just challenge the exam. We had to pass this prior to taking the next level.

PS. We Passed!

Step 3 - Intermediate Coastal Cruising. For this we signed up and spent a week in July living aboard a 45' Juneau sailboat. We disembarked on a Monday and spent the next 5 days sailing. We covered about 50 nautical miles while learning all about sail trim, anchoring, cooking meals aboard, operating a larger boat while utilizing the navigation skills we learned prior. At the end of the five days we were pretty confident in our abilities and even faired some rough seas at one point. We capped the week off with another exam to cover all the information we learned in the past week. I think by this point I was just about done learning and needed a break.

PS. We Passed!

So now you are asking, What's the next step? Well, all these certifications now give us the ability to charter a boat around the globe. But not only can we charter, we can actually bareboat which means we do not require the services of a captain as we can now officially do that role ourselves. That's the next step. I think the British Virgin Islands are calling and we shall enjoy some time in Caribbean before we make the leap to get our own boat.

It was a huge amount of learning and time commitment to get these certs but well worth it. I have now put into practice key points we learned, on our own boat when we go cruising for a few days. If you plan on spending some time on the seas then I cannot recommend courses like these enough. Look online, they exist in most places. Good luck and Fair winds.