I’ve been planning sailing trips for several years now in conjunction with this SailTime business and learned some lessons worth sharing along the way. One of the big benefits of the SailTime program is that Members are free to take sailing vacations without feeling guilty that they left the boat they own at home for bluer pastures abroad! While our PLUS program, alone, opens up a world of sailing adventure, there is nothing like traveling to a distant sailing mecca to immerse yourself in a cruising vacation.

Now, we are 60 days away from our next sailing trip. But the planning for our Fourth Annual Captains Cruise began in ernest last Summer right after the Third Annual concluded. Thanks to the internet we have a boundless resource for planning vacations and preparing. Over the next several weeks, I will share with you my process for planning our sailing trips. Keep in mind that I plan for a flotilla which has to take into account more points than if you were just making plans for you and your friends or family on one boat. I plan two trips a year for our Members to participate in if they so desire. The good thing about that is I am always in a state of planning…there is always the next trip to plan for!

Some people don’t like planning trips. I love to. So that makes this “tough job” easier to handle. There is something to be said for last minute travel. Especially in a down economy. You can save some major bucks if you can go spur of the moment. But most of our trips are to foreign lands never visited before that require more than casual planning. Also, there are generally easier places to sail and more challenging places to sail. You need to tailor that into your plan. Here is my process for planning:

• One of the most exciting sailing trip decisions is where to go. I like to decide where to go as far out as a year before. This gives me 3-4 months to make the boat reservation.
• After you decide where you need to decide when. We go during shoulder seasons. It’s not the “off” season, but the shoulder between high and low. It merges the best price with the best potential for good weather. There is a shoulder season nearly universally in the Spring and Fall.
• As soon as you know when, its time to research what charter operators are available. We like to work directly with the operator because of our flotilla situation, but you may want to use a charter boat agent or broker. If in doubt, working with a 3rd party could help you if things don’t work out. I do as much research as I can about operations and finally try to have 2-3 to get quotes from.

In many instances the operator decision will be easy. There may only be one! But in cases like the Mediterranean or the Caribbean you may have several factors that go into your choice of operator. For instance, a popular method of getting the most bang for your buck is to do a “one-way” charter where you pick the boat up in one place and drop it off in another.

That is what we are doing this Spring. I found a Sicilian charter operator who was able to put all the pieces together for us. We are sailing for two weeks leaving the NE Sicilian port of Portorosa for a cruise of the Aeolian Islands and the North Coast of Sicily, dropping the boats at the NW end of the island in Palermo.

With only 60 days before departure I am at the fun part of the planning. Digging deep into the internet to become familiar with our sailing destinations. With a little You Tube and Google Translate, I know more about our first stop at Vulcano Island than I could have ever imagined!

Baia Levante Centro Nautica, Vulcano Island in the Aeolians

In my next installment of these Sailing Trip Planning Tips we will choose an awesome crew and reserve the boat!

Tags: 2010, flotilla, itinerary, planning, sicily, vacation

Learn to sail in Ventura County at Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor this Spring. There has never been a better time. We are celebrating five years of operation here by offering the lowest sailing lesson prices ever! That’s right…you can get private sailing lessons at our award winning sailing school and earn American Sailing Association certifications at nearly half off our 2009 prices and at even less cost than when we began our sailing school in 2006.

In addition to our lower lesson rates, for a limited time, we are also offering $1000 off our joining fee to become a Member. When you add this all up, our new pricing saves you thousands of dollars. We want you to keep as much money in your pocket as you can – and – enjoy the SailTime sailing lifestyle at the same time. You can have it all!

The SailTime sailing lifestyle is unlike anything ever before. You sail a new, fully loaded Hunter yacht,

as little or as much as you like each month for a tiny fraction of the actual cost of owning a boat. You pay one monthly fee. No loan payment. No insurance payment. No dock or storage fees. No maintenance fees! When you come down to “your” boat, it is clean and waiting for you. It just doesnt get any better than this! SailTime is perfect as a family pastime on the water. It’s great for couples and it provides an invigorating way for friends to get together and enjoy our remarkable coastal waters.

Sailing lessons are more than just a convenience at our SailTime base. We require that our members be trained to at least the ASA103 level before they are allowed to sail their boat without a Captain on board. Ocean sailing demands a variety of skills and confidence which our private sailing lessons are designed to teach you.

ASA 101 is also known as Basic Keelboat Sailing. In this group of lessons you will spend about 15 hours on the water with your instructor sailing your SailTime boat. In this comprehensive module you will learn all the parts of your boat, rules of the road and basic navigation. You will sail on all points of sail and practice leaving and returning to the dock properly. See the complete course standard here. There is a written test and practical on-water test to earn certification.

ASA 103 is also known as Basic Coastal Cruising. It picks up where 101 leaves off and we like to teach them concurrently so that you are immersed in sailing. This module also consists of about 15 hours of one on one sailing time with your instructor. Time spent deals a lot with safety and seamanship skills designed to create a competent sailor capable of commanding a 33-36 foot yacht in light to moderate conditions. See the complete course standard here. There is a written test and practical on-water test to earn certification.

The great part about SailTime is the end of these first lessons is not the end.

It can be just the beginning. Sailing is the kind of sport that requires you practice it to stay competent. In the “old days” that meant your next step would be to buy a boat. With SailTime that just isn’t necessary any more. Sure, your goal may be to buy a boat. In fact, about 30% of the people who join our program go on to buy their own boat after they gain experience with us. But for about 50% of the people who join, SailTime fulfills their sailing experience entirely. The other 20% were just passing through, which happens too.

Right now, you can pick your dates for lessons. The sooner you get started the looser the schedule is. But there are only so many days available so why not get started now? With our new, highly competitive lesson pricing it’s going to fill up fast.

Tags: asa, learn, lessons, sail, Sailing

It was a rainy morning which is strange in its own right around here when news reports began to make the rounds that a tsunami of some sort might find its way to Southern California. NOAA even set a time of about 12:30 here. So, I set about getting my chores done so I could be ready (to do what I’m not sure) at the boats. At the very least I wanted to see the docks move. The time came and passed and there was nothing that I could see. So after about 15 minutes I drove back home.

As I rounded the corner the water at the harbor mouth looked more like a river than a bay and I dashed up to my room to grab the camera. Any camera. All batteries were dead. Ack. Ran for the VHF. Yup. Dead battery. I plugged everything in and ran onto the deck to watch the show that had at this point subsided.

You can see why the Powers that Be got excited about this Chile Tsunami with this animation of the 1960 Chilean tsunami

The phone rang and it was Mike, a Member of Bodacious who was down at the docks reporting they had just moved significantly. I got enough juice in the VHF to turn it on and hear a “imminent threat by tsunami of 6-8 feet” pan-pan on it. Apparently the peak of the waves was about a half hour away. Soon after, the commercial fishing fleet tore out of the harbor en masse, as did the oil rig tenders and the big CIA looking ship that’s been hanging out at Hueneme lately. I looked down at my truck with a heavy heart and seriously considered getting in and driving away.

Finally, I had enough juice in one camera to catch the “big one” at about 1:45 pm. The water receded about 3 feet from the harbor. That meant over at kidee beach, the swimming area floats, were dry. There was a huge beach below the Jetty and a steep ledge was created where the dredged channel was. The channel itself was full of whirlpools and looked like a running river as the water receded out of the harbor. By now, Mike had come out here and was down on the “beach” in front of my house catching the action as the harbor drained and then in short order, began to fill up again. I think my video will be hard to tell. But I think Mike got some of the dynamics because he was up close on it.

All in all, this was not your average day at the harbor! As soon as I have a charge I will download the video. My heart goes out to the poor people of Chile suffering the consequences of such a massive earthquake.