My hubby and I have been yearning for the sailing life for literal years now, and we decided that…read morethis summer was the perfect time to start making that dream a reality by taking the first sailing course, ASA 101! Our initial thought was to find a sailing school in Kemah, but I wondered if there was one closer to us, and, sure enough, there is!
Enter Outbound Sailing on Lake Travis. We scheduled our class right away online, and the manager, Sean, confirmed with us almost immediately. Both he and Tim, the business owner, were absolute pleasures to work with!
When the day finally came for Day 1 of our ASA 101 course, we headed over to Lakeway to meet our instructor, Spencer, at the dock, and, y'all, he is seriously the most open, sweet, encouraging, and engaging person ever, and that's not hyperbole! I was extremely nervous about the whole thing, but he immediately made me feel INCREDIBLY at ease, and, we got straight to work!
From beginning to end, hubby and I knew that Spencer had our backs, from the dock talks to the rigging talks to the knot talks to the hours of beautiful practice sailing. He made all of that hard work feel like pure fun!
Make no mistake, though, y'all! It IS hard work, and you need to know that going in! It's an actual class, so don't expect mimosas and charcuterie boards as you sail! LOL! You need to Really. Want. To. Learn. How. To. Sail. We did, so we were all in!
Pro tip: When they tell you to buy the official ASA book for the course and to study it PRIOR to the class, take them seriously! Study, and especially commit the Points of Sail and the sailboat, sails, and rigging parts to memory. Also, do the 4 review sections! It'll all make things a lot easier on you!
There's a 100 multiple choice question official ASA exam that you take on the morning of Day 2, and, while Spencer was a GENIUS at preparing us for it, we were able to spend more time actually sailing because of how prepared we made ourselves ahead of time!
After two intense and awesome days, hubby and I both ended up passing the course to become ASA 101 certified (yay!), but, most importantly, we truly had the time of our lives doing it, and we absolutely have Spencer LeGrande and Outbound Sailing to thank for that!