Boating School Information

A typical boating school will offer students classes in many different subjects and it will also usually group these classes into different courses so that students become adept in specific areas like small boat sailing, cruising and sailing keelboats. Powerboating offers a whole different series of challenges and also has its own set of extremely specific subjects that a student has to learn about. And then there are the sailing calculations, which comprise all the formulas that sailors and navigators have to know so as to be able to handle a boat correctly.

If you decide to take a class in small boat sailing, you will most likely learn about the following:

• Knots and lines: learn all about the different type of Nylon, Kevlar and Dacron lines (ropes), their strength and the knots that you can tie with them, including the fishermen’s bend and the clove hitch;
• Weather: no one can sail without understanding how weather conditions affect sailing and where to locate information of prevailing conditions.

Next come the keelboat courses, which include in-depth tutorials covering subjects like:

• Design and stability: this course covers concepts like ballast displacement, motion comfort and load waterline length and is essential if you want to have an understanding of how a boat handles in the water;
• Boats and rigging: find out about the different types of sailboats, hulls and boat parts (including rigging and sails).

Cruising is another specialist sailing course, and here you will learn about:

• Navigation: course content contains information on latitude and longitude, current, planning a landfall and related matters;
• Docking: you will learn how to move a boat in a marina and also how to dock (pier and slip) and how to anchor.

Powerboating is regulated by an entirely different set of rules to sailing and here you will be taught about:

• USCG Rules of the Road: including detail on inland navigation lights, inland sound signals and inland lights and shapes;
• Powerboat handling skills: learn the difference between interesting manuevers like hawse turns, pivot turns, axis turns and barrel turns.

Sailing Calculators are among the most difficult concepts that a boating school can teach and include formulas for:

• Speed/time/distance;
• Landfall fix;
• Maximum hull speed;
• Angle of vanishing stability; and
• Sail wind load.

And once you have a firm grip on all of the above theoretical subjects, your boating school can begin teaching you all the practical aspects of sailing.

One Response to “What I Learned at Boat School”