Affordable Luxury Yachting And Sailing
You can organise your own Sailing Yacht Charter Holiday if you have a love of sailing, even if you have no experience. This sort of adventure could be the best five days of your life.
Many images of ordinary people enjoying boating and sailing are posted on the web each day. It’s plain to see boating is no longer a sport reserved for the rich. Modern construction processes have made getting involved with boating and Yacht Charter or ownership much more affordable than perhaps you first thought.
You can get qualified first.
For qualifications, organisations like the RYA is an excellent resource for information. They cover all aspects of sailing and are one of the most respected marine associations in the world.
If you want to try a sailing day or weekend? Then plenty of RYA sailing schools run weekend introductory sailing courses. I use the word courses with caution as many people don’t want formal coaching to try a leisure sport.
In my opinion, Introductory courses function best where a professional skipper takes you out for a couple of days, and perhaps you stay overnight on the yacht or boat, during that time have a go at sailing at your own pace. There is simply no point even attempting to do more than that on your first sailing trip.
You don’t even need to do this via a sailing school to love that first introduction to sailing.
The best way to develop a love of sailing
My recommendation in this post will take a little longer than a weekend to become totally hooked on sailing, but it might just set you on the way to meeting new people and learn to sail all at the same time.
Get together a group of people in the same or similar situation as yourself. Perhaps pose the question on social media and run a small ad. Four people tend to work best and exchange ideas about where you might go for your first sailing adventure. My advice is to select a well known holiday destination with easy airport links and something to do other than just sailing (I will come back to that point later). Decide on a budget, and again my recommendation would be a five day holiday.
Let’s say you go with all my recommendations. So you are going to Charter a Yacht for five days with an experienced skipper. Somewhere warm in the Mediterranean, Croatia is perfect for beginners, although there are plenty of other places you can go to.
Use a Charter Broker to make your booking, and they will do the shopping around for you and provide options and advice rather than trusting one charter company to sell you a holiday.
How I developed my love of sailing
Years ago, I started taking people out for sailing weekends on my UK based yacht. I had intended to develop a business, so the yacht was equipped for charter. I placed a straightforward ad in a national newspaper. Enquiries came flooding in, mostly from single people, although some couples also came along.
The script back then being we would meet up in the marina pub where I kept the yacht. On arrival, everyone put the gear on the boat. We then went to the pub and got to know each other over a few drinks. The next day we went sailing. I ran the business for about one season and met lots of people. Most had never been sailing before. The point of telling you this being, I never knew who would come along.
You might think I had some good times and some bad ones? Actually, everyone was great, and some came back for repeat weekends. I concluded that the adventure attracted like-minded people who go on with things, making the best of whatever happened.
The following season I started working for a couple of sailing schools. Still, training courses’ formality meant some people had a slightly different agenda to just having fun out on the water.
You can easily organise a charter.
Fast forward 25 years to 2021, Yacht Charter with a qualified skipper is now very popular. Your sailing experience can be ZERO so long as you have a love of sailing. You don’t even need to know the people who will join on your charter, that’s no problem anyway, they will be looking for the same sort of holiday as you so that it will be great.
This brings me back to having a five-day charter in a popular tourist place. Perhaps you will draw up a “Lets Go Sailing” itinerary for an advert, even if it is not a hard and fast plan, you can include 50% of the time on land-based expeditions or simply at anchor off a beach enjoying water sports. The sailing can be limited to concise days where everyone understands the basics without any formal training. The skipper’s job will be to keep you all safe and ensure you all have a good time. He will not complain about having an easy week.
My idea is certainly not original, and you will be able to find organisations that specialise in exactly what I describe. I will be pleased to hear if my suggestion is a spark for somebody who falls in love with this fantastic hobby. You might even be one of the lucky people to find love of a different kind, plenty of people find partners who are like-minded through sailing and boating. Send me your thoughts; what have you got to lose?
Handy links if planning a holiday
https://www.interrail.eu/en/plan-your-trip/trains-europe/trains-country/trains-croatia
localised weather, unexpected moderate waves can travel great distances before losing their energy. Worry about the ever-present danger of being hit by a wave, especially when that wave can catch an unsuspecting crew member off guard. Talking about the unexpected wave danger as part of a Skippers safety briefing. Fortunately, rouge waves are less frequent in summer months but do exist all year round.
At the point of wanting to spend extended periods on a Yacht, it is time to
Do check the details.
This is where you need to question the need for a skipper (even if you are reasonably experienced). Even if you have some experience, perhaps it’s a tough call to think of a local skipper.
