Learning how to sail with Sunsail Agana – RYA Day Skipper

I did it!! I fulfilled my dream of leaving Australia to learn how to sail in the Adriatic Sea of Croatia. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for years now and finally took the leap and locked it in earlier this year. I wrote a blog months ago on this, you may have read it, or may not. Regardless, I did it and I’m so happy for taking the leap and challenging myself to learn something new. I’ll admit i was pretty nervous before hand, the fear of not being good enough was definitely there. It wasn’t as difficult as I had initially thought and our instructor Jon, was a really good teacher and very patient with all of the students on board, especially me as I was the least experienced on the boat.

I decided to learn how to sail with Sunsail at the Agana location. Sunsail offers RYA courses that are recognized internationally. The courses I was interested in were the RYA competent crew + RYA day skipper but I was unsure if I could enter the day skipper course without first completing the competent crew, I hoped with my experience on a sailing boat back in 2016 would be enough. All went well and after a challenging and extremely fun 5 days at sea, I walked away with my RYA Day Skipper badge of honor. Yay! One happy sailor Jess right here.

The course is split into 2 parts – The RYA Day Skipper Theory & RYA Day Skipper Practical. The theory part is to be done before you hop on the boat for the practical training. Sunsail had also mailed me two books to read before arriving. Both books were helpful and informative and helped me gain the confidence needed to step on the boat with the knowledge required for the course.

Our instructor Jon was very knowledgeable and a great teacher to all 5 of us sailing students. Our days consisted of theory lessons to test our knowledge of sailing and practical sailing training where each student would complete a task like stern-to mooring, anchoring, med mooring, passage planning, trimming the sails, man overboard, tacking, jibing and knot tying. The course was thorough and I finished feeling confident with my knowledge and new sailing skills.

What’s next? Well.. nothing is set in stone yet but finding a position on a boat would be ideal, whether as a hostess, deckhand or whatever. As long as I’m on the sea and can put my new sailing skills to good use. I feel content on the water and could very happily live on a boat indefinitely.  Stay tuned as I’m positive that within the next few months or even sooner I’ll be back on the water being a little sailor girl once again. For now, I’m just enjoying this adventure that I’m on and taking things one step at a time. I have one more month in Croatia where I’ll be based in Split working for a local pub crawl and from there, the options are endless.

Sailing school with Sunsail Agana exceeded my expectations and ended up being one of the best weeks I’ve had in a while. I learned so much and had a wonderful time sailing the seas with my crew-mates and instructor Jon. Thank you to Sunsail for a great week, I enjoyed every minute.

Safe travels & happy sailing!

Jessie

Check out the following links for all the details on the course: Sunsail Agana Sailing School  & RYA Day Skipper Practical

Price : $1134 AUD

Additional costs 

– Log book , approx $30 Aud

Mooring fees – shared amongst the crew on board with you. This will vary depending on the location of your course. Approx $80 for the week was spent on morning fees per person.

Food & Alcohol – breakfast and lunch is provided on the boat but dinner and alcohol consumed is at your own expense . To be honest, our nightly dinners were much more than I was expecting and I wouldn’t want to eat like that every night while traveling but for these 5 days it was fine. Approx $30-$50 a night was spent on meals.