A keelboat sailing school on the Chesapeake — four US Sailing certifications, five teaching boats, four USCG-licensed instructors, and a fifty-year habit of turning landlubbers into bareboat skippers.
The foundation course. Tack, jibe, heave-to, dock under sail, and crew a keelboat under twenty-six feet in light to moderate wind. Most students leave with their first certification in hand.
Captain a cruising auxiliary up to thirty-five feet on coastal waters. Provisioning, anchoring overnight, fuel and water management, weather, and reefing under load.
The certification charter companies require. Multi-day passage, refueling at sea, electrical systems, the dinghy, the head, and the small-systems failures that make a charter trip a charter trip.
Paper-chart and electronic-chart navigation, dead-reckoning, set and drift, tide and current calculation, the handheld bearing compass. Pure classroom, evenings + Saturday mornings.
The bareboat trainer. Forty feet, two cabins, a working galley, a real holding tank, a real cantankerous diesel.
Class sizes are capped at four to keep the instructor ratio low. The May, June and July weekends fill first; the panel at right shows availability across the next twelve weeks. Bareboat seats book six months in advance.
Six week-long summer sessions. Optimist for the youngest, 420 for the older — swim test required, sunburn included. Half-day morning camps and full-day camps both available.
Got your own boat and want a captain for the day? Family sail experience? Half-day corporate? Captain Linwood books private days year-round, your boat or one of ours.