I’ve actually got a Weeks dinghy Sailing holiday in October coming up in Greece, I plan to sail every day. There are also RYA instructors there so I’m hoping to learn a lot.
Thank you so much for this, Phoenix yacht club looks like it could be perfect for me, I have filled out the form already to hopefully do a trial sail.
That’s slightly more information but it’s still a bit vague, perhaps because you don't yet know what you don't know. People weekend in wayfarers (16') and some masochists in even smaller stuff. I assume what you are really asking though is how can you move from dinghies to small yachts?
I'm not sure I'd agree with that! The best way to get experience sailing is possibly to have free access to a boat - but friends are not necessarily good instructors and family are often difficult teachers / learners!
I would agree with that critique. I've also met people who have crewed an entire season and just followed instructions, because mid race nobody has time to teach you or wants to let the beginner take the helm and lose speed. Some clubs specifically cater for this with race classes designed to encourage newbie development. But certainly not all clubs are created equal. And clubs which are great at teaching might not be affordable to keep a boat at if that is a future consideration.
Many sailing clubs are RYA training centres which MIGHT make it cheaper, but often with volunteer instructors it will take you a whole season to learn what you can in a weekend or two; and if you arrive halfway through the course you have a long wait until the next one.
and that is also true of family/friends so don't worry that you aren't well connected - they might be a liability if you were!
If you've already been sailing in the UK and then spend a week sailing in Greece, you should come away with the essentials of the wind (if you get the chance to windsurf for a day when you are there it is brilliant for learning to feel the wind and how it drives the "boat"). One thing to be aware of on foreign beach holidays - many of the customers want to spend as much time as possible playing in the sea, so I'm told they tend to rig the boat for you, you hop on and sail away. I know someone who spent a week there and never touched a halyard or outhaul etc! So do ask them to help you learn that stuff too. You probably won't learn to reef, anchor, motor onto a pontoon, tie up with springs, use a chart, understand tides or a whole heap of other stuff that is actually useful for cruising. You might learn about trapeezing, beaching a boat, capsize recovery, trimming a boat etc which are much less relevant to yachts - so making the transition before getting too far down the learning pathway will make a difference. You CAN learn all that stuff about cruising in dinghies but most clubs (and even training centres) are not focussed on that and more likely to teach racing dinghy stuff than cruising them.
Up until this point, I’d never really thought about being crew. But the idea of crewing in a race actually really appeals to me.
