A friend and I just completed ASA101 with U-Sail. I started this with absolutely no knowledge of…read moreboating, and my friend had quite a bit of knowledge about boating but was completely new to sailing.
We looked at several other sailing courses local to the Orlando area, but decided on this one because the size of the lake was perfect for learning to sail and it was in an easily accessible location. (We had also looked at a sailing school on Lake Fairview, but that lake was less than half the size and would be very difficult to get real sailing experience on.)
Note re: all ASA 101 courses: you sign up and get your books ahead of time, and are supposed to study the information prior to beginning class. (There are a *LOT* of terms to learn in sailing as well as some basic knots you need to know, and your class outcome will be directly impacted if you don't at least study this information first. It's all reviewed during class, but there's a lot of information to take in and it wouldn't be possible to actually learn it "on the fly" in class, especially vocabulary.) Trust me, there are a lot of moving parts and you definitely want to spend your class time learning and grasping the mechanics of sailing, not learning vocabulary.
One of the things I really liked about this school is that the instructor has been sailing for over 30 years and was formerly a professional racer. She's very patient and is able to explain the concepts of sailing then apply them to real scenarios so you can understand them. This particular course comes with a wealth of experience and knowledge that I don't think you would be able to find at many other schools. While we followed the standard sailing procedures per book, she also taught us a lot about how to efficiently rig the boat to make life easier for us.
We had to reschedule a few times because Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate with your schedule, but that worked out well because it gave us some extra study time for the books.
Learning to sail is sort of like learning to ride a bike. In theory, you just hop on the bike, start pedaling, keep it balanced and you go forward. In reality, there's a lot more to it and it takes practice and time to hone your skills. Sailing is similar in that theoretically you just hoist the sales, steer the boat and move forward, but if you don't really know what you're doing you're going to spend a lot of time drifting aimlessly in the water and floating around in circles (or worse). After our 101 course, we're confident we have an excellent foundation and are looking forward to a lot of time on the water to hone our skills (instead of floating around in circles, ha!) :)
Since we started our class, we've met many different people who've taken classes at other schools along the Florida Coast and were consistently surprised at how little the students learned in their classes. From their stories, a lot of them gave up sailing because they weren't taught properly and couldn't effectively use a sailboat after their classes. We asked them questions about their courses and instructors, and it was clear that many of the other schools just ran people through the course to give them the diploma but didn't teach them anything.
Captain DJ is very patient and an excellent and knowledgeable instructor, but will also gently push you to make sure you know how to do things properly. This is the real deal not a diploma mill.
There are also some fringe benefits (memberships, etc.) included as a graduate, but I won't list them here because they may be different at the time you sign up.
We really enjoyed our course and are actually signed up for the ASA 103 course to learn additional skills on a larger boat.
Before my courses with U-Sail, I was just curiously interested in sailing. Now I'm ready to become a pirate!
