Lessons Continue - Basic Coastal Cruising (ASA 103)

After a little debate at home (related to the discussion from this post) we decided to continue with the Coastal Cruising course here in Colorado.  Yesterday was our first classroom session for the new course (this course consists of 2 classroom sessions and 4 on the water).

One of our concerns with the school we're using was that the "theory" class from the previous course wasn't very good.  The class had a slide presentation, but the instructor tended to bounce around a lot and we didn't feel it presented information in an effective manner.  I'm happy to report that the class last night seemed to flow much better and we felt we got much more out of it.  The instructor (same one as the first classes) seemed more comfortable...we wonder if having the owner at the first class was a distraction for him.

We received our textbook and immediately started covering theory.  What to do as the wind picks up (reefing and mechanisms involved), the finer controls used to shape sails and other secondary controls, how the forces on the various sails impact the handling of the boat, dealing with hypothermia, dealing with fire, etc.  Of course...maybe this all made more sense since we were introduced to many of these topics during our previous on the water lessons...who knows.

(image from NauticEd)

Also glad to report that the textbook for this course seems far better than the pamphlet we received for the ASA 101 course.  Seems it may be a much better study guide for the first test.