At Solent Events we get people onto the water that may never have been afloat before and always hope that this may be the start of something for an otherwise landlubber!
Our sailing event days require no previous experience and we estimate that 70% of the guests that sail with us have never sailed before. We often get asked by those ‘bitten by the bug’ what the next step would be to continue to learn to sail. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend huge sums of money buying a boat or sell a kidney to finance this new habit! There are dinghy and yacht clubs all around the country welcoming new members and many sailing schools and training centres that can get you on your way.
The Isle of Wight has an amazing charitable organisation called UKSA that is a training facility for children and adults from all backgrounds that are responsible for many of the professional sailors that we use regularly on our yacht charter events. Schools bring groups to learn dinghy sailing, kayaking and larger yacht sailing and school leavers and adults from around the world start their professional recreational or merchant marine training here.
If you are looking to join a crew, dinghy and yacht owners can often not sail their boats alone so are often looking for crew with many happy to coach newcomers to develop their skills. A 40 foot cruiser/racing yacht for instance needs anything up to 12 crew onboard to race effectively and we’ll guarantee that most of these have an eager learner onboard that can make a half decent cup of coffee and follow some basic instructions! Various crew search websites such as Crewseekers exist to help match sailors to boats for both private owners and charter companies.
The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) run a whole range of world respected training courses for both sail and power boats and have bases all over the world if you don’t fancy learning to sail in the UK in the middle of winter! These courses have a clear development path to help learn the skills essential in producing safe and competent lovers of the sea.
For those more interested in Ribs & Powerboats, many training centres around the UK operate the RYA’s Power Boating training scheme for practical and theory courses from the most basic to Commercially Endorsed Yacht Master Power qualifications held by our skippers. We recommend Power Boat Training UK based in Poole and Lymington who in our opinion deliver the highest quality training using some of the best instructors in the business.
The moral of the story is that where there’s a will there’s a way regardless of wealth, gender, age or background – GET OUT THERE as the water is there for us all to enjoy!
