Blue Water Sailing School Comments |
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| Date Submitted: | August 20, 2009 |
| Sailing School: | Blue Water Sailing School |
| Location: | FL - Fort Lauderdale, United States |
| Classes & Instruction: | 4 out of 10 |
| School Facilities: | 7 out of 10 |
| Accomodation: | 5 out of 10 |
| Cost & Expense: | 7 out of 10 |
| Recommend: | No |
| Review: | Not Entirely Smooth Sailing with BWSS Like the other reviewer of Blue Water Sailing School on this site, my partner and I had a less-than-desirable experience in the Course A+ with BWSS out of Newport, RI, this summer. The course was a week-long, live-aboard school that led to 101, 103 and 104 ASA certifications. The good news is that all the instruction was focused on the tests for those certifications, and we were adequately prepared to pass the tests. We also gained valuable experience in coastal cruising and living aboard a sailboat. But the overall experience was often unpleasant, and much of what we experienced didn't seem to coincide with what BWSS advertised for this course. Like the other reviewer, we found our instructor often impatient, indifferent, and sometimes even dismissive of our questions. He was obviously knowledgeable about sailing and (I gather) very experienced, and we learned some valuable lessons about sailing and cruising. But he was not at all flexible or accommodating, very rigid in both his thinking and his practices, and rather uninterested in what his students thought or had to say. Moreover, he drank too much. Each evening after we anchored and settled in for the night, he initiated a cocktail hour, which began with some snacks while he prepared dinner and usually continued well into the evening (until 10:00 p.m. or so). He and one of the other students consumed an astonishing quantity of alcohol during these sessions with only modest help from the rest of us, including a half gallon of rum, two bottles of scotch, and 4 or 5 large bottles of wine over five evenings. (The rest of us mostly drank a few beers each evening, so we didn't do much to help consume the harder stuff.) At times our instructor became obnoxious after he was drunk, and one evening he displayed inappropriate impatience toward the students when one of the heads seemed to clog. (It was actually not clogged, which made his mini-tirade even more inappropriate.) He also spent a lot of time telling critical stories of students he had in previous classes. He was unprofessional and generally unfriendly. I would not sail with him again. I'd also add that although the sailing school is intended to be intense and requires students to work, I found it inappropriate and in fact even a bit insulting that we were expected to clean up the dinner dishes each night. At times we were treated like uninformed children who had to clean up before bedtime. I don't mind hard work, but we were told that the fee for the course included instruction and daily sailing exercises, all of which would end by dinner, after which we were on our own. That wasn't the case, and it made for an uncomfortable and unenjoyable time. Luckily, one of the other students was a good guy and very reasonable sailing companion. Otherwise, the week would have been unbearable. The upshot is that I achieved what I hoped to achieve (ASA certification) but I would not sail with Blue Water again nor would I recommend them to other sailors. |
| Submitted by: | Frustrated 51 year-old :: Male Reviewer :: New York |
1 comments for this review
| Comment by: BIll Waugh From: NY March 30th, 2011 |
What was the instructor's name? We had a similar experience in the BVI's |
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